Hi!
I have an assembly made in Inventor 2019, that I want to render completely as it is.
Meaning, the materials, the decal, colors etc. Basically, just import it into Blender, and render it.
But, from what I have seen so far, I only managed to import the assembly into Blender via STL file.
When I do that, the model pretty much loses all its “visual qualities”, if you will…
How do I have to go about doing this?
Help is much appreciated:)
Kind Regards,
Anders
Export to FBX? That -should- keep the materials intact.
But not sure if this is possible in Assembly…
rob
Hi Rob,
Inventor 2019 apparently can’t expor to FDX format.
Is there another way to get around this?
Thanks
No idea, sorry…
I can only think of looking what kind of 3D format can be exported from Inventor, and see if there’s a compatible plugin for Blender.
CAD to 3D is, and always has been, a bit of a pain. Some applications have dedicated plugins for this.
If all fails, I can only think of applications like Okino Polytrans or something like that.
rob
edit, link: https://www.okino.com/solutions/autodesk_inventor.htm
I am having the same need but in my case I want to be able to take Solidworks models into blender, without the loss of detail or messy meshes, so hopefully what I’ve found so far will apply to Inventor.
I don’t like the .stl method because it export many separate files, one for each part I think, and the mesh is not good looking, so, one format that has worked better for me is .vrml, with the advantage that the detail on the exported mesh is dependant on the quality of visualization that it’s configured for the viewport, so if you want a lot of detail just increase quality of models on the viewport and if want less complex mesh just lower it.
But the way that just found how to take solidworks model to blender is by a conversion software called Cad exchanger, it has a free trial version. So what I do is, export the file to ACIS (.sat) format (there’s several formats that might work but this worked for me), open it with cad exchanger, and export it from there to .fbx, finally import into blender, this way it comes out in a very beautifully looking clean way. Only thing I don’t like about this is that software is not free so I keep on searching for options how to do this.
Hope it helps in your case
Edit: I just read with more attention, and about the materials I don’t think they will be retained, but you should create the materials in blender and apply to the different parts
Hi Pancho,
Thank you for your reply.
I think this might be the way to go. I will have a go, and see how this works.
Thanks for the help:)
Regards Anders
Sure, give it a try en let us know the results, also if you find another good alternative to this 
What you need to do is to convert the CAD data to polygons. Good formats is .obj or .fbx. I usually use Rhino3D to do this but if you want a free alternative maybe FreeCad could work. Save your assembly as a step file and import it in FreeCad and export as obj. I have not tested this workflow myself so I’m not sure how FreeCad handles material definitions.
Hi Ztreem,
Inventor is able to export OBJ. I tried that, but the problem is that it seems to convert an assembly into all loose parts, which means I have to re-constrain them. I am not sure if that is something I would need to do regardless. Is it much hassle to constrain the parts in Blender?
By constrain them you mean for animation or do you mean that the parts are all out of place?
Also about materials, you will need to do the setup of those in Blender but you can do the material definition in Inventor (like which part has a certain material). Decals depends if they are made of geometry you don’t need to redo them in Blender but if they are textures you need to set it up in Blender.
You should be able to adjust the stl when exporting from inventor. Also you can mass select stl files to import into blender. You could also export a step file, bring it into FreeCad and export it from there. The only issue with that is that there is not a way to adjust the quality of the mesh on export, but it will be better than exporting an stl with default settings.
Regarding constraints, I mean the parts don’t move “as a unit”. For example, I try to grab the assembly and move it, I only move the part that I am holding, not the entire assembly. At least, that’s what happened last time I tried the OBJ format.
Ok, I’ll just redefine the materials in Blender. Does Blender have a material library like Inventor? Ie, different kinds of metals for example?
The decals are made by geometry in Inventor (sketch + image wrapped onto surface).
