Can't get non-Pro/E data into Keyshot via Pro/E

[NormanHadley]

I wonder if someone can help with this puzzler. I'm trying to import some models from GrabCAD via Wildfire 5.0 and thence into Keyshot. (I want to assemble them precisely with respect to geometry I've created in Wildfire, so I don't want to go directly from GrabCad into Keyshot.)

The problem is that Wildfire 5.0 doesn't recognise many of the files on GrabCad, eg Inventor, Sketchup and SolidWorks formats. Here's an example of a computer keyboard. https://grabcad.com/library/keyboard-4/files. Wildfire 5.0 won't touch it.

So I hit upon a wheeze to first read the IPT file into Keyshot, output to obj and import that into Wildfire. That seemed to work OK, appearing as a single faceted feature that I could position correctly in the assembly. The problem was, when I exported the whole assembly to Keyshot 4.2 (using live linking) the faceted parts didn't show up at all. I only got the Pro/E-authored geometry.

I'm probably missing something obvious – there has to be a better way of doing this. I guess I could look at Creo 2.0 which is supposed to be better at handling heterogenous data but I'd prefer to stick with Wildfire if I can. This has nothing to do with subassemblies (see other thread) because the failure to translate to Keyshot is happening with a single part.

Any ideas out there?

[Chad Holton]

Hi Norman,

I run into this every now and then. You just have to get lucky and hope there's at least a STEP file of it. The problem with OBJ is that it's already tessellated and WF doesn't like OBJ much. You can try asking the originator of the model for a STEP. I hate finding a real nice model out there but the creator only posted renderings of it... it's GrabCAD, not GrabPictures!   

[NormanHadley]

Thanks, Chad. Glad to know it's not just me.