Plug-in for AUTODESK Inventor files

[jmplonka]

Hello!
I'm currently working on an importer for Autodesk (R) Inventor (R) files. Simply because my son hat a license from school and it will end in 2 years
Current status:

• * Inventor files are OLE2 files
  * iProperties can be imported and some of them can be attached to the FreeCAD files.
  * embeded Excel workbooks are added to FreeCAD document.

Next Steps:

• * display sketches with lines, etc.

* The AddOn requres therefore the python packages for xlrd, xlutils and xlwt
The project is currently located on https://github.com/jmplonka/InventorLoader.
Any help (eg. retrieving the coordinates or the names of objects) is highly welcome.

[DeepSOIC]

Hi!
Feature Announcements subforum is for announcing new features of base FreeCAD, so I moved your announcement to "Python scripting and macros" subforum. We don't have a dedicated forum for announcements regarding add-on modules, both this and Open Discussion forums will do.

You can ask Yorik to include your module to add-on gathering

[jmplonka]

Hallo,
Sorry for posting in the wrong subforum and thanks for moving.
- Jens

[ickby]

Hello,

This seems to be na cnice project! Do you have any reference for the format like a specification? Or do you reverse engineer it? If so, it is ASCII format?

[jmplonka]

Hi
Hope it'll be a nice project for others as well...
The files are are OLE2 format.
Inside there are properties, sometimes embedded Excel workbooks and the inventor data files. Some of them contains compressed sections.
A detailed format description I haven't found until now. So ther parser is based on reverse engeneering.

[jmplonka]

Hi,

just startet to dokument the file format. https://github.com/jmplonka/InventorLoa ... Format.odt
BTW: The current parser dumps the found data to the Report view. Look like:

Code: Select all

Reading: D:/Workspace/Inventor/files1/500M.ipt
	'3': 
	6b12d008-b54a-4d14-b56c-674aa482a8ec [15]
	[0001,8008,1FCC,0000]
	[0000,8008,1C52,0000]
	[0000,0000,0000,8001,0064,2328,0000,0000,0000,0000,0001,8008,1FCC,0000]: 18307934-64fd-48b7-b303-1a61372c6785
	[0001,0001]
	[0000,0000,0001,0000,0000,0000]
	PmGraphicsSegment
		[0,0071,011B,0015,1BE4,107F]
		PmGRxSegmentType: [006A,0000,0000,8008,1C52,0000]
		 1: 00,00,0,[0034,0000,0000,0000],0002
		 2: 01,01,0,[0040,0000,0000,0000],0009

[yorik]

Hi Jens,
fantastic!! This will interest a lot of people... The support of proprietary file formats in open-source projects is always a very complicated matter, because no documentation exists. Thanks a lot for this!
As DeepSOIC said, when you feel your project is taking flight and you would like it to be listed in our addons list at https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD-addons (so it can be easily installed by users, directly from within FreeCAD), just tell me.

[jmplonka]

Hi,

first working prototype is ready

The plugin can either import or open Inventor Part Files.

Working Feature:

• Import 2D-Sketches with Points, Lines, (Arc-)Circles and (Arc-)Ellipses.

Feel free to have a look at https://github.com/jmplonka/InventorLoader.

I made some screenshots (ref. Attachments)

[HoWil]

Really nice.
Do you think you can also port 2D parts? Is it the same procedure and does only need to be implemented?
Since you 'understand' at least some 2D sketch-elements you could also write an exporter for that?!
BR,
HoWil

[jmplonka]

Really nice.
Do you think you can also port 2D parts? Is it the same procedure and does only need to be implemented?
Since you 'understand' at least some 2D sketch-elements you could also write an exporter for that?!
BR,
HoWil

Thank you
I think, I didn't got the point. Perhaps I explain the next steps, what I'm planning to do:
a) add extrusion/pad, pocket support,
b) add fillet and phase, ...
c) revolution, groove, loft and sweep...
d) mirror, pattern
e) boolean operations
I hope that somewhere in between, I'm able to link the names of the browser view to the corresponding 3D objects...
Currently I stick to FreeCAD 0.16 that doesn't support splines or text in sketches. so this feature will be skipped.
Perhaps your idea is included but if you are thinking in the opposite direction: an importer for Inentor to support FreeCAD files - no way