Hi Chris,

> I don't know if there is "room" in any of the current formats
> like IGS, STP, SAT etc. to incorporate this.

Not really - although there is some room for sticking in custom data into some of these formats you would need to get a lot of CAD vendors to agree how to treat the custom data all in the same way for it to actually work for data transfer.

That's a pretty tall order because it is difficult enough just getting everyone to handle data that is part of the official spec as it is.

- Michael

Michael, thanks! I have a demo version of Rhino with a few saves left, so I did as you said.

The STEP file imported into Rhino okay and I saved out a 3DM file. When I opened up the file in MoI there was nothing in it.

Also, I don’t know Rhino much at all, but I couldn’t find any material or color assignments anywhere. Should I assume that color information isn’t being preserved?

–Randy

Hi Randy - hmm one issue that I forgot about is that Rhino may tend to make block instances out of stuff it reads in from STEP files.

MoI doesn't read in blocks, so if that was the problem try running the "Explode" command in Rhino before saving, that will convert any blocks into just regular geometry that MoI should then be able to see.

You can see what type of object it is in Rhino by selecting something and running the "What" command, and if it says that it's a block instance then it needs to be exploded.


> Also, I don’t know Rhino much at all, but I couldn’t find
> any material or color assignments anywhere. Should I assume
> that color information isn’t being preserved?

Yeah if you don't actually see the colors in Rhino then they didn't come into Rhino either - you would probably normally see them as layer assignments with the layer colors set up.

It could even be possible that Pro/E does not write out color information to the STEP file in the first place.

- Michael