I sometimes have customers send me CAD models in native SolidWorks format. That would be fine if I had Solidworks, but I can do most of my CAD work with software that doesn't cost $4k upfront and $1.3K per year. Often when the customer sends me the file in some other format its excessively large and has internal inconsistencies. I won't make any accusations, but it does seem odd when a CAD program that costs that much produces files that have issues in non proprietary formats.

It has bugged me and no doubt cost me a few jobs. I found a solution that will work atleast for some parts. GrabCAD Workbench on-line. Create an account, create a new project, upload the customer's SolidWorks file, after its uploaded select it. After it has rendered select "download as" from the file menu and select a format that is better for you. I just did a mold file. The customer tried to send it to me in STEP format. It was over 70MB and it locked up my CAD software. I used the Workbench tool with his original SolidWorks file. The resulting STEP (.stp) file was only 13MB, opened nearly instantly, and stitched to solid automatically as I selected.