[marine1775]

I have a dumb question. We are trying to train some of our operators on Surfcam. So we have loaded SC on a couple of computers out on the floor that does not have Solidworks loaded. Surfcam will not import a Solidworks file even with the key in place. This is the case with V3 thru V5. Does Solidworks need to be loaded on the computer with Surfcam? If it does the problem with that is not enough seats of Solidworks.


Thanks

[moldcore]

What version of Solidworks? Could be the version is too new for that particular version of Surfcam to recognize. Try saving the Solidworks file in an older version.

[marine1775]

It is Solidworks 2012. I didn't think you could save back versions in Solidworks. If so how do you do it?

[machiningweasel]

you probably need to save them as a parasolid .x_t and when you click save as go to the drop down menu and click parasold then click options and change the version of that to like 16 or 17, because i ran into the same problem when i was running v3 surfcam

[moldcore]

Sorry Marine1775, I’m not a Solidworks user just thought that was possible. Maybe a Solidworks user will chime in. Most programs don’t like to save to older version to encourage purchases of the latest product and sometimes new features can’t be translated into older versions. However a good workaround would be to save as a parasolid x_t file as long as you can save the x_t in a version that your Surfcam can read. I’m pretty sure you should be able to save the parasolid file in older versions, check to see if there are options for the export from Solidworks. I translate from my CAD system to Surfcam5.2 using Parasolid x_t all time using version 24 with no problems. You may have to go back version 17 for Velocity 3.

[marine1775]

Thanks for the replys. I will try that it should work. I figured that Surfcam was a partner with Solidworks and you could import .sldprt files without having Solidworks installed the same computer. I use Soldiworks and SC onthe same computer to writeprograms and I have no trouble importing native Solideworks file into Surfcam.

[Chrliev]

Sounds like you may need to update the Document Manager API.

Here is a link to CAMcad Technologies Tips Page, they have lots of SurfCam tips, for some reason their website is better than SurfCam's, Go Figure...

SURFCAM Tech Tip: SolidWorks 2010 Document Manager

Its an older link, but I did this and it worked, substitute SolidWorks 2010 for whatever version of SW you are using, ie SolidWorks 2011 or 2012.

Hope that helps