Switching from Inventor to Creo

[Saqibiqbal]

Hello All, i am 100% new to this form and creo systems too, my company is switching to Creo from Inventor and we got hundreds of thousands of parts designed in inventor system and now we want to move them to creo system. Why i am here? I would like to ask you all that is there any way to keep the features and constraints in assembly/parts in inventor when we move them to Creo? Making step files lost all constraints and features.

Thanks in advance.

[BenLoosli]

Not possible!

STEP transfer of the model and DXF transfer of the drawings are the only options without going the "custom transfer" route.  The "custom transfer" usually involves low-paid students to remodel and create new drawings in Creo from your Inventor data.

When we switched from Unigraphics V18 to Wildfire, we limited the Wildfire usage to new product designs and maintained the existing designs in UG. Over the years, we eventually got most of the designs 'converted'. Just in time to be sold and switch again to CATIA!

[remy]

Importing features and constraints back is a recurring pipe dream in data translation.

This is not part of Creo functionalities according to the article : https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article?n=CS293949

and of any CAD on the market.

Only university projects ventured in this area: the level of complexity and the effort to keep the pace of updates (for all combinations: Inventor to Creo, Catia to Creo) is not viable (former CAD data exchange developer speaking) for an industrial company. That's why data translation focus only on the outer skin ie the Bézier Representation.

Luckily Creo enables to import Inventor files : https://www.ptc.com/en/support/article?n=CS134024 

You will have to make do with the BREP translation (which is already quite a lot) and the good news is that the Flexible Modeling extension enables to re-build some of the features (patterns, etc) and bring back some of the IP.

and like shared by @BenLoosli  you need to decide on the methodology for older designs:

• batch process the whole database or
• import on the fly 

[Saqibiqbal]

Hi Thanks for your suggestion regarding BREP, well this is for CAD, any idea about DRAWINGS (.idw) ??

[BenLoosli]

Nothing will migrate a drawing file and maintain associativity.

Your best bet is to take PDF images of the drawing sheets and import them into Windchill.

Second best option is to import a DXF version of the Inventor drawing file.

Third option is to import an IGES file of the drawing.

There is NO CAD system that will do a clean import from another system with full features. Drawings are not even possible to import with associativity.

[remy]

One may think otherwise but developing drawing data exchange is even tougher than 3D's.

Just imagine, translating and managing entities such as lines of type composite, NUBS, NURBS, actual character, symbols, not to mention their placement, layers, visibility, suppression... 

The simplest:

• for consultation: export the idw to DXF from Inventor (because Creo does not import Inventor drawings) and read the DXFs from Creo
• for modification, re-create the drawings by:
  1. importing the Inventor model in Creo 
  2. create the drawings again