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Struggling to import a STEP file...

ryan_henningryan_henning Member Posts: 6
I have a STEP file. Here's how I obtained my STEP file (in case that helps): I downloaded the STL file from [1], and then I used FreeCAD to convert it from STL to STEP. The resulting STEP file is 14 MB. (?)

Anywho, I'm now trying to get that STEP file imported into OnShape. It uploads, and it shows up in "My Documents", but two things are wrong:
1. When I open the imported file (by clicking on it from the "My Documents" page), no shape shows up.
2. When I click the "Imports" button at the top right of the screen, it shows my file's import status as "Importing" rather than "Imported". Is that a problem? Does that just mean I need to wait longer? (It's been about 15 minutes already.)

Thanks, you guys rock! I'm loving OnShape and this is the first real issue I've run into. My goal here is to continue using OnShape but to incorporate this STEP file into what I'm building in OnShape right now.

[1] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13038

Comments

  • ryan_henningryan_henning Member Posts: 6
    Well... it's fixed now! Turns out waiting solved it. The UI could be more clear on this... I suspected I should be waiting, but it was weird that I could open the document BEFORE it finished converting.
  • john_rousseaujohn_rousseau Member, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 391
    Hi Ryan. To start, yes, the UI could be more clear on this, but we try to indicate the status with "Importing" and "Imported". I encourage you to open an improvement with the feedback tool to let us know a better way to do this. Unfortunately, there's no way currently to provide a progress bar.

    What happens when you import a file from the document list page is that we create a new document and put your source file in a tab. You can open this immediately. Sometime later, where "later" is usually a few seconds but can be several minutes, the translated part studios and assemblies appear in the document. 15 minutes seems like a very long time. Looking at the logs, your last translation brought in a model with 5810 entities over 26 minutes. That's a lot of entities to process. Other folks in the forum here may have suggestions on how you can generate a simpler (cleaner) STEP file before importing into Onshape.

    -John
    John Rousseau / VP, Technical Operations / Onshape Inc.
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