Solidworks models in my AutoCAD drawings?

[nscherneck]

I want to model the main electrical distribution gear and be able to show these on my sheets in AutoCAD for my structural diagrams. How do i get my models into AutoCAD, i notice SolidWorks wont Save As a .DWG. Is it possible, and if so, how good does it look?

[Lazer]

Nope, you cannot direct a model to from SW to Autocad, you have to save the model then open a new .dwr then create the views you want then save as a DWG.

[Bloodwig80]

Correct. Save your views and then save as dxf and import into acad.

[nscherneck]

So SolidWorks gives me the ability to save views within a drawing as .DXF? That sounds like it will get me what i need.

[Lazer]

So SolidWorks gives me the ability to save views within a drawing as .DXF?

Yes, you can save the views as .DXF

[JD Mather]

For solids

Save Copy As type ACIS (*.sat) and select Options and set to r7.

In AutoCAD use the ACISIN command.

If you don't have SWX and the user already saved the ACIS (*.sat) as a later version you can convert it back to r7 with the free Hoops ACIS Viewer (search Google).

The free Inventor LT from http://labs.autodesk.com along with the free SolidWorks translator will read SWX files directly.

[spittle]

The free Inventor LT from http://labs.autodesk.com along with the free SolidWorks translator will read SWX files directly.

So could you open a SWs model in Inventor and continue working with it? and vice versa?

[JD Mather]

So could you open a SWs model in Inventor and continue working with it? and vice versa?

You should have started a new thread. This is a different question. The original question was about SWX and ACAD.

For SWX and Inventor you can open the files in each but you may be limited by version restrictions, for example, I don't know if Inventor will read the just released SolidWorks 2008 files as I don't have that release to test.
Of course you could always use STEP (*.stp) files between the two programs.

Now, you would of course, lose the feature history tree but both programs have a Feature Recognition add-in to rebuild feature trees. Even if you don't need the prior history the "dumb" solids are editable for additional features as well.