Solidworks Program Problem

[Joe Pelonio]

I have this young art institute student here trying to figure out how to export her design for me to laser cut, she has Solidworks. It supposedly will export to DXF, PDF etc. but she has no idea how and has already spend close to an hour. Anyone know this program? :confused:

[Jim Becker]

Don't know the program, but "export" functions are most often located under the "file" menu and sometimes the "edit" menu in programs that tend towards the defacto-standards of GUI interfaces. OR it may be under "Save-As" under "file".

[Joe Pelonio]

Thanks Jim, but not in this program. Apparently the 3d modeling features make it somewhat unigue, and by looking in the help area we found that there is a different program that comes with it to make it do the cad exports/imports. When she opens that it can't find her file, and won't let her copy/paste either.

[Jim Becker]

Hmm....does she need to save the "original" in a particular version for the conversion utility to work? Something is amiss...

[Joe Pelonio]

Hmm....does she need to save the "original" in a particular version for the conversion utility to work? Something is amiss...
That's what I'm thinking, but she doesn't know how. Hopefully she'll find some help tonight

[Bill Lewis]

You can only export a dxf/dwg file from a drawing document in Solidworks, not a solid part. Otherwise it is a "file, save as..." procedure.

[Joe Pelonio]

Thanks Bill, I e-mailed that to her, she's coming in at 6am and hopefully we can get this done in time for her class.

[Joe Pelonio]

:D Thanks, Bill, that was it. She got the file exported at home, then got here about 6am.

We got it done with just 25 minutes for her to make it across the bridge to class in Seattle.

When I imported to Corel 12 every line was actually 20+ on top of themselves (the curves were fine). The simplify command locked up the PC so I hd to do the deletions manually, but finally it cut beautifully and the pieces fit together perfectly. A happy customer. I should have charged her about $200 for that but she's a starving student and brought me a mocha, so I charged her $20. Didn't have time to get a pic though.
Turns out she was studying automobile design, but saw some of the work others were doing in furniture and decided to switch.<!--IBF.ATTACHMENT_448243-->

[Bill Lewis]

That's cool, I'm glad it worked out. Yes dxf is not as universal as it should be. Transported dxf's can sometimes be more work than starting from scratch.

Too bad you didn't get any pics, but I suppose you could have cut another one, just like the other one. Since you have the file it would only be a Little Feat.:p :p :p