Imported dimensions from Solidworks issue

[Karl S]

Hi, I'm using AutoCAD mechanical 2010 and when I bring in an exported *.dwg drawing from SolidWorks 2010 the dimension units intially appear correct until they are moved. When they are moved the dimension style is "updated" to fractional instead of decimal. When I look at the imported dimension styles they were all converted to fractional when they came into AutoCAD. Is there anyway to stop this from happening or automatically set the styles as they initially appear until moved? Thanks.

[Grant]

It depends how the solidworks dwg units was created and Autocad units are. Try making solidworks and Autocad have the same unit base before the transfer. Other than that in Autocad - match properties to a dimension you want the Solidworks dimensions to be. The transfer of Solidworks to Autocad is definitely hard.

[Karl S]

Thanks for the reply. I've tried making them the same units, even set up the acad.dwt template file to the units I want, makes no difference. I've used match properties in the past but it is difficult because these are machine drawings with two or three place decimal units along with tolerances with lots of them to select. It's annoying because everything looks correct when it comes in, so the format is stored somewhere, but the style properties are changed to fractional without updating the dimensions that came in. I've thought about importing the dimensions on a seperate layer and exploding them to "lock in" their temperary appearance. It seems to be a SolidWorks export issue because I've opened a converted SolidWorks to dwg drawing in their 2d dwg editer DrafSight it does the same thing.

[Grant]

I think the only way you will be able to do anything is to do it in Autocad as I find Solidworks just doesn't seem to have the ability to do that sort of thing. Maybe write a macro to get all the dimensions and read the Dimension text and update the dimensions to what you require.

Sorry it's the only thing I can think of!

Solidworks is really good at what it does but when you want a DWG file it isn't that good at doing that part. I import profiles to Solidworks that have been drawn in Autocad and I have a lot of problems making sure the units are right. Even though it should come in in mm, most of the time it wants to come in in Feet and Inches. I always have to manually change the setting!

[Karl S]

Yeah, you are probably right, it will take a macro routine to solve the problem (something I didn't want to get into either) but it might be worthwhile since it will save time in the end. This is a common problem for me since I now do most of my design work in SolidWorks and share the design with my coworkers using AutoCAD. I like creating drawings in SolidWorks, since they are linked to the model for updates within SolidWorks, then exporting the entire drawing with dimensions to AutoCAD. I used to export only the 2d views without dimensions into Acad for dimensioning but you lose the dimensional reference to the model in that case. I don't bring too many Acad drawings into SolidWorks anymore but it can be a pain with units, missing relations etc. Cheers!