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  • Published 3 Apr 2025

Solidworks and CAD file Import optimization

Basically I'm trying to switch over to blender from keyshot because blender has so much better rendering and animation capability. The Problem is I'm using hard surface models imported from Solidworks as STL and they shade smooth horribly and are triangulated models. I tried retopolgizing manually which takes far too long given how many components each model has. I also tried Quad remesher and other auto remeshing tools and they just don't work very well with hard surface CAD Geometry.

I think enabling people using CAD Models to more easily import and shade smooth their models would greatly increase blenders capabilities. that way people can produce engineering accurate models in Solid works and other cad programs and get the best possible rendering quality using blender

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Development Status: Open

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sam706
3 Apr 2025

2 Comments

AgentA1cr

Importers for .stp and .igs files would be awesome.

1
1P2D

Hey fellow designer ;) While there are some STEP importer add-ons out there (STEPPER comes to mind), I agree that a more streamlined solution would be ideal. I'd really like to see the dev team put more effort into improving the engineering CAD<>Blender workflow.