Converting STEP files to DWG by using autodesk Inventor and VBA

vba autodesk dwg step
oopbase picture oopbase · Aug 18, 2010 · Viewed 11.4k times · Source

Does anyone know how to do that? My skills in using VBA aren't very good and I also googled for it, but I do not even know how to open one of those files by using VBA.

Maybe someone of you did already do something like this before?

Thanks a lot for any help.

EDIT

The following steps have to be done do convert the files:

  1. Open the STEP file -> File -> Open
  2. Clicking on "Application" in the menu bar -> then "AEC-Exchange"
  3. Now there appears a dialog on the left called "AEC-Exchange" including the item: "Save as DWG". By clicking on it the file can be saved as an AutoCAD 2007 dwg file.

I hope this helps.

Answer

Brandon Boone picture Brandon Boone · Aug 24, 2010

EDIT

Apparently Autodesk Inventor can do the conversions for you natively. http://docs.autodesk.com/INVPRO/2010/ENU/Autodesk%20Inventor%202010%20Help/index.html?url=WS1a9193826455f5ffba22e1113c6c30c0e-3b1a.htm,topicNumber=d0e14826

Open the .stp and save as .dwg? Also, it appears that this is the application that everyone references as being able to do it (At least going from .dwg to .stp). However, it also appears that .stp is a 3D file type while .dwg is a 2d file type. To me, it would seem that the .stp file type would contain data that the .dwg file couldn't handle since 3d is inherently more complex than 2d (unless these .stp files contain only 2d images?). This could explain why there aren't many articles on converting .stp to .dwg.

I've never used the Autodesk Inventor SDK and I'm not that great at VBA either, but there seems to be some pretty good documentation on it here: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=1079044

Here are some of the resources I found on this page:

Intro Files / Inventor VBA(.ivb) Sample file:

VBA & Inventor API Introduction (zip - 547Kb) The following resource will help you get started with programming Inventor. It assumes familiarity with Autodesk Inventor and general programming concepts.

Video Tutorial:

DevTV: Introduction to Inventor Programming A self-paced video tutorial demonstrating how to get started developing with Autodesk Inventor. View online | Download

Alternatively, if your only goal is to simply convert a .stp/.step file to .dwg. You may be better off finding some free converter over interfacing with Autodesk.

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