Depending on format capabilities, CAD Exchanger supports both parts and assemblies.
Files with external references (in STEP, JT, Solidworks and other applicable formats) are supported.
B-Rep and meshes
All types of geometries are supported – analytical, NURBS and procedural.
Triangulations, polylines and point clouds are supported.
Converting between B-Rep and meshes
When converting B-Rep (precise geometry) to mesh-only formats (e.g. IGES to STL) the mesh generator is applied to each B-Rep body. Depending on target format capabilities it can be either single or multiple meshes per B-Rep (the multi-LOD, or Level of Details concept).
When converting B-Rep & mesh formats to mesh-only formats (e.g. JT to OBJ), a specific LOD in the source file is used.
When converting mesh-only to B-Rep & mesh formats (e.g. VRML to JT), only the mesh is used.
Converting a mesh-only to B-Rep-only format (such as STL to Parasolid) effectively has a very low value and thus is not recommended. When enforced, the conversion creates a B-Rep body consisting of faces per each original mesh triangle. Such a B-Rep can merely be used for visualization purposes but not for modeling. Refer to details.
Meta-data
Depending on format capabilities, CAD Exchanger supports names, persistent id’s, user-defined properties, colors, materials and textures.
PMI (Product and Manufacturing Information)
Whenever applicable, PMI is supported at all three levels: as graphical PMI, semantic PMI and associations with B-Rep elements (such as face or edge).