Recently, I helped one of our clients bring a legacy 3D DXF into SOLIDWORKS. I want to share the proper workflow for doing this in case you ever need to perform the same task. I will also point out an error that we ran into and its resolution.
Importing a 3D DXF
If you have a 3D DXF or DWG file that you need to import as 3D entities rather than 2D sketches, you’ll want to take a specific route to import that file. Use the open dialogue as you would to bring in any other part, and I’d recommend filtering from “All files” to just “DXF/DWG” or “Autodesk AutoCAD Files” so that only our target file type appears. Once you select your file and hit open, you’ll encounter SOLIDWORKS’ DXF/DWG import dialogue.
In the DXF/DWG import dialogue, select “3D Curves or Model” to bring your 3D DXF into a new part
Select the radio button to import this to a new part. Select 3D Curves or Model, and your 3D DXF will ideally come into SOLIDWORKS as a solid or multi-body part. If it fails to knit it all together, it will come in as a series of curves, but this is usually the result if everything is just on the same plane and you import it using this method. If you’d like to bring a 2D DXF in and turn it into a 3D file, you can create a new part file, then go to Insert > DXF/DWG. This will be the same dialogue as before, but you can then use the 2D to 3D toolbar to align sketch entities and create something solid more easily.
Import Bounding Box Error
The error we ran into when bringing this file in was that our file contained an invalid bounding box. Unlike the reference geometry bounding boxes you can use on parts in SOLIDWORKS, this is actually referring to the bounding box internal to a SOLIDWORKS file that dictates how large lengthwise in any direction the part can be. This is about 1000m in any direction, and so if you also get this error, it may mean that the 3D DXF was exported too far away from the origin for SOLIDWORKS’s part-bounding box. The solution to this is to move the part(s) in the source software closer to the origin. This should make the error go away.
3D DXFs can be a common file format for scan data when items are being reverse-engineered, and our team of experts can help if you’re looking to get CAD models from your scan data. Learn more about our Project Engineering Group.
