SolidWorks plugin (official thread)

[thopiekar 46]

Just reserving this thread for questions between plugin users and sharing the latest state of work here.

Additionally, feel free to add ideas for improvements, which are important for you as issues to the project page.

Looking forward to stimulating and inspiring ideas!

Thanks!

 

• Website: https://thopiekar.eu/cura/cad/solidworks/

------------------------------

Tested by community members and Ultimaker:

• @drayson
• @AbeFM (SWX 2016)
• @poolec4 (SWX 2017)
• @XYZDesignPro (SWX 2018)
• .. and other members, who want to be anonymous or simply wrote by mail.

 

 

Edited May 28, 2019 by thopiekar

[drayson 75]

Hi!

Great plugin!

I use it with SW2013 (student license). One thing I noted is that SW is closed when opening a file in Cura, but I guess that's because of the old version...

Further the part is in a very dark scheme.

Again, thanks, now I have a reason looking for an update... :-)

[thopiekar 46]

Hi!

Great plugin!

I use it with SW2013 (student license). One thing I noted is that SW is closed when opening a file in Cura, but I guess that's because of the old version...

Further the part is in a very dark scheme.

Again, thanks, now I have a reason looking for an update... :-)

Nope this should no happen. Are you using the plugin since Cura 2.7?

PS: I never had the time to track the oldest version, which is able to be used, but since the first version of the plugin, which was released in the plugin browser in Cura 2.7 a lot of things have changed to increase stability. Please remove the plugin if needed from cura's config directory

Edited October 19, 2017 by Guest

[drayson 75]

Hi!

Great plugin!

I use it with SW2013 (student license). One thing I noted is that SW is closed when opening a file in Cura, but I guess that's because of the old version...

Further the part is in a very dark scheme.

Again, thanks, now I have a reason looking for an update... :-)

Nope this should no happen. Are you using the plugin since Cura 2.7?

PS: I never had the time to track the oldest version, which is able to be used, but since the first version of the plugin, which was released in the plugin browser in Cura 2.7 a lot of things have changed to increase stability. Please remove the plugin if needed from cura's config directory

Yes, I use it since 2.7....

I made an update of your plugin and now it behaves normal. Open files without closing SW and also the rendering is ok.

Guess the file integration is ok, the SW integration itself of course not. Saw that there should be an icon in SW, but for this it seems my version is too old.

Nevertheless - THANK YOU for your efforts!

[thopiekar 46]

No problem. How did you update the plugin? Is an update advertised in the plugin browser? I'm not that familiar with the development of it.

Yeah, the macro needs a major update and needs to be shirked a lot. Wanted to do that, but my SolidWorks is broken at the moment. Whenever I want to edit an macro it crashes :(

Hope I can improve it for you all soon!

[drayson 75]

yes, if you look into the plugin browser, there is the note to install or even update it. went flawless...

The days I used SW in study and office we never did something with macros - most of the stuff I learned by myself.

Grüße aus Graz! :-)

[thopiekar 46]

Great, I'm asking for the update functionality, because I directly code out of the plugins directory in the Cura configuration directory. This I don't download any plugins from the browser, etc.

Nice to hear it works well. As far as I know there was still the version 0.2.0 on the download server at Ultimaker.

Might be that they uploaded the latest release of the plugin now.

Well, I used CATIA at my university. Planning together with Ultimaker to work on this. I could work in the lab in my university and develop this plugin, but I don't know at which conditions the licence has been sold to my university. So to not get in trouble I wait until eg. Dessault Systemes cooperates (they are still deciding) or not.

Servus aus Solingen, bergisches Land - NRW

Lass mich wissen, wenn es noch was gibt, dass nicht funktioniert oder verbessert werden muss!

- Thomas

[poolec4 0]

Hi, using this plugin in my workflow has been great and it made it so easy to work with Solidworks.

It seems, however, that something broke in the 0.3.3 or 0.3.4 update that was made a few days ago. The ability to open SLDPRT files in Cura is gone and the macro disappeared from Solidworks. I attempted to disable and re-enable the plugin, and even tried completely uninstalling Cura, but it still does not work. It is shown in the plugin browser as installed.

Any help would be great and I look forward to using your plugin again!

[Gigi 43]

Plugin instaled but sldprt not available in selection "all suported"

Cura 3.02 windows 10

[thopiekar 46]

Good morning guys,

please send me your logs, so I can get an better impression what is going wrong.

Thanks and hope we can fix your issues soon!

[rmi 4]

It seems like we are working on similar topics Cura <-> OpenSCAD integration.

I'm curious what your plugin is doing (and how), but as I understand it requires Windows and SolidWorks, so I can't take a look myself. Is there a description of your plugin available?

[thopiekar 46]

Well, it is not well documented, but you can take a look at my project page.

I also have a prove of concept of an SolidWorks plugin. Also for Blender, but this has currently some issues, but I know too less about Blender, so no idea where the issue is from. Could be either the script I wrote or the blender file I downloaded from thingiverse.

However, if you are interested to jump onto the development of the plugin I have feel free.

PS: If you have ideas just send me an mail. Let's keep the topic at the SolidWorks integration

Edited October 31, 2017 by Guest

[cpaxson 0]

I'm having problems after Cura updated to 3.0.4...It is saying when I click "Upgrade" in the Browse Plugins dropdown that it is an invalid plugin file. Solidworks is telling me that it cannot find Cura. Thanks!

[Gigi 43]

Windows 10

Nvidia Quadro K620

Cura 3.0.4

Solidworks plugin 0.3.7

Perfect.

Working, he transformed an solidworks assembly in an STL.

Edited November 14, 2017 by Guest
details

[thopiekar 46]

I'm having problems after Cura updated to 3.0.4...It is saying when I click "Upgrade" in the Browse Plugins dropdown that it is an invalid plugin file.  Solidworks is telling me that it cannot find Cura.  Thanks!

 

Like Gigi mentioned try the 0.3.7 version (latest currently).

Ultimaker just has not published it on their plugin server so far

- https://github.com/thopiekar/CuraSolidWorksPlugin/releases

[drayson 75]

Great, I'm asking for the update functionality, because I directly code out of the plugins directory in the Cura configuration directory. This I don't download any plugins from the browser, etc.

Nice to hear it works well. As far as I know there was still the version 0.2.0 on the download server at Ultimaker.

Might be that they uploaded the latest release of the plugin now.

Well, I used CATIA at my university. Planning together with Ultimaker to work on this. I could work in the lab in my university and develop this plugin, but I don't know at which conditions the licence has been sold to my university. So to not get in trouble I wait until eg. Dessault Systemes cooperates (they are still deciding) or not.

Servus aus Solingen, bergisches Land - NRW

Lass mich wissen, wenn es noch was gibt, dass nicht funktioniert oder verbessert werden muss!

- Thomas

 

Servus Thomas!

Some time passed, but now I had a moment to give the macro also a try at SW2013... works flawless there too... :-)

[drayson 75]

 

Great, I'm asking for the update functionality, because I directly code out of the plugins directory in the Cura configuration directory. This I don't download any plugins from the browser, etc.

Nice to hear it works well. As far as I know there was still the version 0.2.0 on the download server at Ultimaker.

Might be that they uploaded the latest release of the plugin now.

Well, I used CATIA at my university. Planning together with Ultimaker to work on this. I could work in the lab in my university and develop this plugin, but I don't know at which conditions the licence has been sold to my university. So to not get in trouble I wait until eg. Dessault Systemes cooperates (they are still deciding) or not.

Servus aus Solingen, bergisches Land - NRW

Lass mich wissen, wenn es noch was gibt, dass nicht funktioniert oder verbessert werden muss!

- Thomas

 

Servus Thomas!

Some time passed, but now I had a moment to give the macro also a try at SW2013... works flawless there too... :-)

Just a remark: as the cura version get new releases, it might be good to just call the button "Export to Cura" and remove the versioning.

But thats jsut my two cents

[thopiekar 46]

Version 0.4.0 is out for testing!

https://github.com/thopiekar/CuraSolidWorksPlugin/releases/tag/0.4.0

[thopiekar 46]

And another one.. 0.4.1!

Just forgot to check something after rewriting many lines of code.

https://github.com/thopiekar/CuraSolidWorksPlugin/releases/tag/0.4.1

Have fun!

[thopiekar 46]

Last update for today.

- 0.4.2 released!

Includes:

* UI fixes for display scaling

* Drawing support (only one part or assembly is allowed to be inside this drawing)

[XYZDesignPro 70]

I did the update to the plug in from within Cura 3.0.4, but it installed 0.3.7 How does one obtain and install 0.4.2?

[thopiekar 46]

Under https://github.com/thopiekar/CuraSolidWorksPlugin/releases download the latest .curaplugin file.

In Cura go to Preferences > Configure Cura ... and in the following window under "Plugins" there is a "Install new plugin" button. With this one it shall be possible to install and update any plugin.

If it does not work, just let me know

[XYZDesignPro 70]

Version 0.3.7 was working perfectly. Followed your instructions and now unfortunately the plugin is completely broken:(. Prior to this update I was able to select a SolidWorks part file from the Cura File > Open. Now I get an error message stating it is an unsupported file type. SolidWorks 2017 SP4.1, Windows 10 Pro 64 bit.

Any suggestions?

[thopiekar 46]

Hey @XYZDesignPro,

sorry for the late reply, but I get only daily notifications via email over new posts.

First of all, please excuse the issues you have. Before you begin, please close Cura.

1. Could you be so kind and send me your log file?

Since you are using Cura for work, you can also write me a mail with the log file attached. Just in case sensitive info is included.

2. Also go into the plugins directory (AppData/Roaming/cura/3.0/plugins) and look for the SolidWorks plugin. Make a zip of it and also try to attach it to a mail. If your upload is limited, just let me know. I can make some space free on my NAS.

It will be useful for me to understand what happened.

3. After zipping the contents, remove the plugin from this directory and start Cura again. Just repeat the instructions how to install the plugin using the .curaplugin file.

If it still does not work, please send another log file.

Regards

- Thomas

(PS: Sent you a PM with my email address.)

[thopiekar 46]

Hey guys,

could you please confirm that 0.4.3.1 is working?

I noticed a strange bug in this version.

- Thanks!