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Feature Recognition

james_frenchjames_french Member Posts: 4 ✭
in Community Support
Can Onshape (or possibly another app) import existing part geometry like holes, extrusions from other CAD formats.

Answers

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    Jake_RosenfeldJake_Rosenfeld Moderator, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 1,646
    Hi James,

    Onshape can import editable geometry from other CAD programs, but currently does not do any feature-tree recognition of how that geometry was created.
    https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/translation.htm

    What are you hoping to use this feature recognition for?  Our direct editing tools provide a wide array of functionality on imported geometry:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf_fJbcVnlI
    And our create selection tool will allow you to make selections of holes, pockets, protrusions, and other complex geometric features for editing:
    https://cad.onshape.com/help/Content/createselection.htm
    Jake Rosenfeld - Modeling Team
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    james_frenchjames_french Member Posts: 4 ✭
    A good example is importing files from Hardware or 3D model sites.   Solidworks has a FeatureWorks add-on that can actually regenerate the feature tree of various parts.  I don't see a lot of vendors supporting OnShape just yet, so functionality to re-create a feature tree would be imperative.   We import tons of parts from various vendors and then modify the geometry to suit our needs.  Imported CAD files that cannot be edited easily are difficult to work with.
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    philip_thomasphilip_thomas Member, Moderator, Onshape Employees, Developers Posts: 1,381
    @james_french - I worked at SolidWorks for 15 years. Its a fine product, but very very very few people used FeatureWorks - it works only on a very small subset of parts (highly prismatic). That is not a limitation of SolidWorks, but of the state of the art (feature recognition). A far better approach is to use direct editing to effect your desired changes. 
    Good luck! :)
    Philip Thomas - Onshape
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    andreas_lechthalerandreas_lechthaler Member Posts: 6 PRO
    I can imagine a semi automatic feature recognition in those cases, where the design history is clear (data migration). This is a important functionality. "intelligent" feature recognition is not necessary. As well it doesn't need to be perfect.
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    derek_ward076derek_ward076 Member Posts: 10 ✭
    I think that if Feature Recognition isn't a feature that is being actively developed, at least having the ability to convert meshes to solids would be an excellent feature to have.  Right now in order to do this you need to use additional software (Solidworks or FreeCAD for me).  Doing this all in Onshape would preferred.
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