Hello community,

any suggestions?

The target is to keep good topology of course, and with that I mean NOT triangles

Both commercial and free options are welcome.

P

I no longer have access to SolidWorks…so I forget, what are your file export options? Knowing that someone might be able to help you.

BabaJ
I no longer have access to SolidWorks…so I forget, what are your file export options? Knowing that someone might be able to help you.

Me neither

This is what I can see from their docs:

http://help.solidworks.com/2017/english/solidworks/sldworks/c_file_types.htm [help.solidworks.com]

I will request some IGES files and see how they look in Houdini. I thought there was also .OBJ but is not in this list. In any case I am ok with quads or NURBS but definitely not ok with anything that is is triangulated.

Well, even if it did ( obj ), that's not what you want. Obj would hold the geometry as polygons not as nurb surfaces which is what I think your wanting to preserve.

And I don't think you can import iges directly into Houdini without some possible unwanted results.

This software here does support the conversion of a SW part file to fbx. But I don't know that file format too much - I think it is used more for like a container for a scene rather than geometry object.

https://www.okino.com/conv/filefrmt_3dexport.htm [www.okino.com]

The software does support converting SW or iges to obj though. Maybe might be able to find a free converter too.

And, if you did use obj you could convert it to a volume within Houdini, if you don't want the triangulated polygons.

But from that point on, I don't think there is anything you can do much to get the volume back into a nurbs surface - unless of course you use the imported obj file as a reference to build your nurbs.


I was curious - it seems .abc supports nurbs and Houdini has an import alembic node but I could not find any convertors for SW or even iges to .abc.

You might want to re-consider working with plygons ( some of which might be triangulated rather than just quads).

If you have high enough polycount you can easily make surfaces indistinguishable from a nurbs surface.

I use to make models in SW and 3d print them…I now do that with Houdini ( that has lots of triangulated polygons )..and there's no way one can tell from the resulted printed models - if it was originaly from a nurbs or poly model.

Of course, this is a moot point since in either case both are converted to .stl

Again, depends on your intentions.