How to Export from SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer to SOLIDWORKS

I recently experienced SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer (SWID) at SOLIDWORKS World 2016 and needless to say I was excited. When I returned to the Javelin office afterwards, I knew I had to get my hands on this product. Sure enough, I did and as exciting as it was to drive it, I soon started trying all the tricks I heard it could do. The first of which was how to export SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer to SOLIDWORKS because as awesome a tool as SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer is, it is far, far better if I can harness the awesome power of SOLIDWORKS alongside it. However, exporting the file wasn’t as obvious as I’d initially thought. But, after some experimentation (which I hope to save you the effort), I was able to figure it out. Here’s how you do it:

Firstly, it matters where on the Export menu you click. I had thought that SWID would be like SOLIDWORKS where if I click on the arrow beside the word it would produce the same result as clicking on the word itself. Not so.

Click on the word “Export,” not on the arrow beside it.

After I figured this bit out, it was completely intuitive from here on in. Step 2 was to give it a filename.

sldxml file format chosen

I could have just clicked OK at this point and it would have been fine, but I wanted to see what other file formats I could export to:

Select SOLIDWORKS format for Export

It turns out I can export to several formats including .3DXML, .AMF, .STL, VRML (.WRL), and our good friends STEP and IGES. There’s also an option to export to SOLIDWORKS, although it exports it as a .SLDXML file, which SOLIDWORKS 2015 and 2016 have no problems importing whatsoever. It even exports to CATIA. Naturally, I chose the .SLDXML file so I could test it out.

Exported SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer file in SOLIDWORKS

The result is a solid, very organic shape that is curvature continuous. It took me mere minutes to create in SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer effortlessly.

Learn more about SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer

To learn more about the new software visit our SOLIDWORKS Industrial Designer product page