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David_M1-Visitor
1-Visitor
January 5, 2012
Question

Pro/E's terrible export "rules"

Export >Solids

Now, in any normal world that would export the solid geometry and only the solid geometry. It definitely wouldn’t export the surfaces because the check box above “solids” is “surfaces” and it is unchecked, meaning ‘do not export the surfaces’. Regardless Pro/E always exports the surfaces too. With a little model this would be a minor annoyance, but when your models have hundreds of parts, and some of those have hundreds of layers and you have to export regularly, then it becomes a massive problem.

As usual, support are no help, not even acknowledging that this is a problem, and not proposing a solution either.

Does anyone know how to sort this out?


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8 replies

Patriot_1776
Patriot_177622-Sapphire II
22-Sapphire II
January 5, 2012

Funny, I've never had an issue. Is it with STEP files, or any or all of the others? I know sometimes I have trouble importing files, and found that solidworks actually has an excellent translator. In fact, that's all I'd ever use it for. If I had a troubled file, I'll import into S/W which usually fixes everything automatically. Then if not, use the tools there to fix it first because it's easier, then STEP it out for import into Pro/E. If it still had problems, they were usually very minor now, and I fixed them there.

Best of luck!

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David_M1-VisitorAuthor
1-Visitor
January 5, 2012

Hi Frank

It's not the quality of the exports that's the problem. It's that Pro/E gives many export options and then ignores all of them every time. The options (specificaly checking 'solids' and unchecking 'surfaces') simply don't work.

It's STEP that I use most often, and IGES from time to time.

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BrianMartin13-Aquamarine
13-Aquamarine
January 6, 2012

Hi David...

Whenever possible I'd stick with STEP. IGES is really aging and it's becoming less and less useful over time. I suppose I haven't much paid attention to whether or not that "Surfaces" check box was actually doing what it said it was. I'll take a look at this.

In the meantime, there are several different STEP standards that Pro/E & Creo can export to. Which one are you using? I might suggest trying one of the newer standards to see if the problem is related to ALL STEP exports or merely the particular standard you're using.

The config.pro option step_export_format controls this option. The possibilities settings are:

  • ap203_is
  • ap214_cd
  • ap202_is
  • 203_is_ext
  • ap214_dis
  • ap209_dis
  • ap214_is

The default is ap203_is

I'd suggest trying ap214_cd because this is a later standard. It also has greater capabiltiies for capturing annotations and preserving model colors. I'll take a look at the surfacing issue. In the meantime, try some of the different export options. Maybe we'll get lucky and stumble upon an easy solution!

Thanks!

-Brian

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    MGortner1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    January 9, 2012

    I've observed this when I open my own exports. But when I checked with someone importing the file in another program, the file was imported as intended. It's a strange phenomenon.

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    David_M1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    January 9, 2012

    Thanks for that Matt. So maybe it's the import that's broken. I didn't think of that.

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    MGortner1-Visitor
    1-Visitor
    January 13, 2012

    That's not exactly what I meant, but glad I helped a little bit.

    I should have asked if you're experiencing this issues when opening in PROE or another program. Perhaps PROE includes extra info in exports that is ignore by some programs but when opened in PROE, you see everything, even item you didn't intend to include like curves & surfs.

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    Patriot_1776
    Patriot_177622-Sapphire II
    22-Sapphire II
    January 10, 2012

    I've never had this issue, even when re-importing my exports to see what my vendor was getting. I TOTALLY agree with Brian in that IGES is a totally out of date standard, and sux anyways and alwas has, and you should always use a STEP file when possible.

    For me, the thing that sux, is that our $55k OGV Smartscope visual/CMM/laser measuring machine only takes IGES. *%*%%**!!!!

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    David_M1-VisitorAuthor
    1-Visitor
    March 6, 2012

    Just to confirm that there is indeed a problem with Pro/E's export, I've just used Creo Direct (free) to open a newly exported STEP file which was set to export "solids" only. All features were in the STEP file, including construction surfaces which were explicitly excluded in the export settings.

    I am surprised that others don't have this problem. It makes data exchange very cumbersome.

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