ACAD to SW handy tip

If you are planning on opening a DWG file with SW to bring some of it into a
SW part, then you can probably save some time with this tip. While still in
ACAD, move whatever it is that you are going to want by selecting it and
positioning your desired point at 0,0. Then select it, Ctrl-C to copy it to
the clipboard, open a sketch in a SW file, and paste in the stuff on the
clipboard. Since you moved it in ACAD, it will drop into the SW sketch with
your selected point at the origin, rather than out in space somewhere. Most
of the time this will probably be faster than moving it later in SW.

WT

 

Wayne,

Good One.

Its a lot easier to move in AutoCAD than to open in SW --> convert to
part -->Move sketch to origin.

Len

 

Bad idea to translate geometry. Was worse on 16 bit systems
but ... you still get trig & other roundoff/truncation errors each
time you do such. Plus it's not associative back to the original
coordinate system (wherever that was).
Better to use a transform matrix when importing.

Some of the complaints one hears about "designers"
& "engineers" from downstream users are quite valid
due to such practices, though I'd wager many of them
do exactly the same sort of thing (but have no clues).

 

The easiest way I found to do this is open the autocad drawing in
solidworks, pick a point on the sketch with the mouse you want to be
at the origin of solidworks, like the center of a circle, end of a
line, or whatever, then go to tools, sketch tools, align sketch.

This will move the entire sketch and your chosen point will be at the
origin of solidworks.

I have a feeling the are a number of things in solidworks that will
work for what you really need, but the documentation doesn't really
come out and say it.

I found this worked while trying to figgure out a better way than
using the move tool on old autocad sketches.

I'm using solidwoks 2006, and mostly use the default settings.