Hello, I have a STEP file sent from a customer who I believe exported it from Solidworks. When I try to open it in MoI, nothing is shown. Sadly I can't share it because of an NDA. Is there anything known, that I can try? It's a text type, and I compared it with another STEP from the same customer that I can open, and while it's different, there is nothing obviously wrong with it (although I am not very familiar with the data format so I am very likely to miss a format problem). MoI gives no error messages.

Thanks for any ideas anyone may have! I'm reluctant to ask the customer to re-export quite yet, especially as it may produce the same file.

Best,
Rachel McConnell

Hi Rachel, it's really difficult to help without being able to test the file.

Does it open in CAD Assistant? https://www.opencascade.com/products/cad-assistant/

Another thing you can try is using CAD Exchanger to convert it to a Rhino v5 .3dm file:
https://viewer.cadexchanger.com/

Also another way to test it is with SolidWorks eDrawing viewer:
https://www.edrawingsviewer.com/download-edrawings

- Michael

...sorry double post...

Well after further googling, I discovered a downloadable tool from the NIST which evaluates STEP files. It is very awkward, you have to tell it the file in question, click a button that says "generate spreadsheet and viewer", and it will create and open 2 files: a spreadsheet showing the contents of the STEP file in only slightly more readable format than the text itself, and an HTML file openable in any modern browser that contains a rotatable, zoomable model of the contents of the STEP file. It mentions any errors it finds.

https://www.nist.gov/services-resources/software/step-file-analyzer-and-viewer

Perhaps this will be useful to someone.

Rachel

Thanks for this, CAD Assistant looks very useful! I have determined the file IS incomplete or corrupted using the NIST software but this is a lot more powerful, and runs locally too.

Best,
Rachel McConnell