SolidWorks plugin (official thread)

[AbeFM 35]

I'm still using one version back, and will switch over when I get a chance. In a big rush to bang out this printer and I've got the plug-in working so well now.

 

BTW, using V0.5.4, perhaps V1 is in order soon, I mean, it works :-),  and it will open assemblies!

 

I wouldn't have tried, but I mis-clicked and this relatively complex part came in just fine! Kinda exciting.

 

 

Feel free to berate my duct design. :-)

[AbeFM 35]

OMG, the good news just doesn't stop.

 

I've had countless issues with stuff coming in goofy, especially stuff drawn at an angle relative to the default coordinate system.

 

I made a new coordinate system, as reference geometer, last on my list - hoping to use it for STL manual output.

 

When next I loaded the SW file, it respected that, and my part is perfectly aligned!

[thopiekar 46]

 

On 18.3.2018 at 2:47 AM, XYZDesignPro said:

Your work on this plug-in is amazing and IMHO a tribute to what makes open source such an important part of the internet experience.

Many thanks for your kind words! Hope I will find a way to get direct access to SolidWorks soon again. There is much to do, like replacing the macro with an addon. So the installation of the button could be replaced with an installer and therefore no additional (manual) setup would be needed.

 

6 hours ago, AbeFM said:

BTW, using V0.5.4, perhaps V1 is in order soon, I mean, it works :-),  and it will open assemblies!

 

 

It also opens drawings  Ok, not truly. It looks up, which part or file is used inside the drawing and opens this file instead.

 

Together with Ultimaker's QA all remaining issues inside the plugin have been fixed. Only thing that is left is a bug in Cura, which does not properly unload system libraries, which are included in the plugin. Therefore it can't uninstall the plugin, which is a new feature that will come with Cura 3.3.x.

Hope there will be a solution soon.

 

Edited March 21, 2018 by thopiekar

[AbeFM 35]

The coordinate system thing works... if you've just saved and STL and used that coordinates when you did it.

(edit: You must save the file, but you can then delete it even before import. You don't need to re-save the SW file, it'll come across right if you've just saved an STL)

So most of the time it doesn't work, I don't know i I can easily reassign it without breaking mates in the assembly at large.

 

It's too bad since the "lay flat" thing leaves a LOT to be desired. You're lucky to get 10% of a flat surface in one layer.

 

 

Edited March 21, 2018 by AbeFM

[drayson 75]

hmm... strange things happens...

installed the latest 3.4.1. and 0.5.5 plugin, the name of the exported files got back to "unknown"

@thopiekar, could you assist? thought this issue has been already adressed... anyway - here's the issue report ?

[thopiekar 46]

Thank you for reporting!

 

Heard the same from two other people. Have you noticed the same problem before?

Or is this new with this Cura Version?

 

Currently my Inventor installation is broken here. Never had time to fix it, but since you in the community are mentioning it more and more, it gets more serious to me.

 

Also to the others, if you have some more details about the problem, please share.

It makes the determination of the problem easier.

 

Thanks!

[drayson 75]

25 minutes ago, thopiekar said:

Thank you for reporting!

 

Heard the same from two other people. Have you noticed the same problem before?

Or is this new with this Cura Version?

 

Currently my Inventor installation is broken here. Never had time to fix it, but since you in the community are mentioning it more and more, it gets more serious to me.

 

Also to the others, if you have some more details about the problem, please share.

It makes the determination of the problem easier.

 

Thanks!

 

as far as I remember, with 3.4.0 it was not an issue (working a lot with SW and print currently), but unfortunately have uninstalled it recently. Anyone else to assist??

[XYZDesignPro 70]

I have both 3.3.1 and 3.4 installed on my work station.  Using SWX 2018.  Part comes into Cura 3.3.1 with the correct SWX file name, but with 3.4 the file name field is "unnamed" not "unknown". 

 

In any case it does appear to be broken in 3.4.  Haven't tried it with 3.4.1

[thopiekar 46]

Have the same here reported by two other people but using Autodesk Inventor. Looks like I need to dive into Cura soon and see what has been changed. Looks like they are determining the project name in a different way now.

Edited July 17, 2018 by thopiekar

[thopiekar 46]

28 minutes ago, drayson said:

 

as far as I remember, with 3.4.0 it was not an issue (working a lot with SW and print currently), but unfortunately have uninstalled it recently. Anyone else to assist??

 

If you could confirm that the issue came up between 3.4.0 and 3.4.1, it would be great. Then the amount of changes to inspect would be less I think, because according to the changelog there were only bugfixes.

 

Thanks!

[XYZDesignPro 70]

As far as I can tell it came up between 3.3.1 where it works and 3.4 where, at least in my system, it does not work.  Well the plugin works, but the file name is broken.

[AbeFM 35]

The plug-in seems to be working - but I'm still having issues with these low quality imports - the Fine setting is way, way to embarrassingly course, and the Course is worse!!

 

In the past, I'd go into SolidWorks, export an STL, select the settings I like (0.01mm, 1 degree), save a file.

Then I could go into CURA, import SolidWorks files all day, and those settings I selected would overide the laughable blocky things that normally are generated.

 

Now (latest version of everything, except 2016SW), the objects use the fine or course settings from CURA and ignore the better settings. Which means I've completely stopped using the plug-in, I like my circles round.

 

Not sure how to help, but let me know and I'll try!

[AbeFM 35]

The left is imported, the right is exported as an STL with above settings, then imported.

I find the difference obvious.

[thopiekar 46]

And the fine and coarse I defined for 3d-printing are still that bad? Can't believe it actually.

 

Well, basically I need first of all time to sit down in calm and look into the code again.

 

A shame that I need to waste 1.5...2h each day to come to work. I would rather use that time for coding and doing great stuff again ?

 

Anyway, the weekend is near.

[XYZDesignPro 70]

Way back when this topic first started I suggested that one of the import settings, in addition to the four already defined, would be a fith choice, the SolidWorks Custom Setting.  That way when a SW user set a custom setting in SWX, such as AbeFM has defined, the Cura user would have that as a choice, and Cura would then use those STL settings for the import.

 

Would that be possible Thopiekar.

BTW, thanks for your tireless efforts on this valuable plugin.  I use it regularly, but my requirements are not as stringent as AbeFM.

[thopiekar 46]

2 minutes ago, XYZDesignPro said:

Way back when this topic first started I suggested that one of the import settings, in addition to the four already defined, would be a fith choice, the SolidWorks Custom Setting.  That way when a SW user set a custom setting in SWX, such as AbeFM has defined, the Cura user would have that as a choice, and Cura would then use those STL settings for the import.

 

Would that be possible Thopiekar.

BTW, thanks for your tireless efforts on this valuable plugin.  I use it regularly, but my requirements are not as stringent as AbeFM.

Yes, I remember. I think a quick workaround would be a "don't touch export settings" option. So you can configure your settings in SOLIDWORKS using the great UI and keep using them in Cura.

 

Is that a workaround you could live with?

[XYZDesignPro 70]

I would certainly think so.  But AbeFM should chime in here.  Perhaps just call this fifth pull down menu choice Custom?

[AbeFM 35]

Yes! Just leaving them sticky from SolidWorks' own settings would entirely be a functional solution! It's what had been working, and I'm not clear how/when it changed.

XYZ:
Uh huh, two sides of the same coin. Sometimes I find my custom settings in SW not what I remember leaving them.

IDEALLY, I could set it within CURA/your plug in, those two numbers... But being able to select "custom" would be great.

 

I'm not sure how far back this changed, in the pursuit of more exact prints I'd been caught up in a couple of other slicers for a while.

 

[thopiekar 46]

Hmm, took some time to look into the code now. I don't see any major changes in Uranium.

Within my plugin(s) I always overwrite the filename like it should be done:

https://github.com/Ultimaker/Uranium/blob/3.4/UM/Mesh/MeshData.py#L94

 

So I see neither something that changed or something new than before.

Also when using my plugins on Linux here, since programming is more comfortable there for me, it just works with Cura built from master. Basically all plugins should act the same - even there should be no major differences between usage on Linux or Windows.

 

 

Will investigate later on Windows with 3.4.1 installed. I'm curious whether it only acts like this over there or not.

[thopiekar 46]

Reproduced the problem on Windows 10 here. So looks like a Windows-only problem.

 

Not sure how long it will take, but will look for a solution, when I find the time ?

[thopiekar 46]

Found the reason for the bug (it did it for the FreeCAD plugin, but guess it will be the same for all the other ones) ?✌️

It is basically due to changes made by the Cura team, I was not informed about, and I was not able to follow with their changes recently.

 

So yeah, don't know when I'll be able to roll out updates, but, however, the solution is there already!

[XYZDesignPro 70]

Good news.  Now that this file name problem has, or soon will be solved, will you have time to address the STL resolution fix?

[thopiekar 46]

Well, made the needed changes just now, but have to check whether it would really work.

 

Another thing that is unclear for a long time is the following:

By definition inside a 3MF file, there are one or multiple STL files. We know there are export settings for STL files, but not for 3MF files (if I'm not wrong). Therefore, since you @XYZDesignPro have SWX2018, if I remember correctly, could you do the following test?

Export a model in 3MF format, but change once the settings for STLs to something very corse and very fine. So if the STL settings affect the 3MF settings, we can see it easily.

 

Would be great if you could do screenshots for documentation or even send me the sample files.

 

The reason why I'm asking is that the plugin skips changing settings for 3MF files (maybe the reason, why you still get bad results). That is the way I programmed it because I never saw 3MF specific settings and the export settings for STL seem to be specific just for this file format.

 

Thanks!

[XYZDesignPro 70]

Without actually going through all of the steps you have outlined, I can tell you for sure that the setting for STL, 3MF and AMF export out of SWX 2018 all carry over.  The differences are only with regard to "Include Appearances" and "Include Colors" in the 3MF and AMF check boxes.  STL does not have those options.

 

 

 

As you can see the dialog box Title Bar is "System Options - STL/3MF/AMF".  No matter which file format one chooses the settings are always the same.

 

Does that help?

[thopiekar 46]

Yes, it does. But still, it would be great if I could have a physical proof. It seems quite obvious, but would really like to see it on my own ?