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I have a program that I want to import some 3D geometry into while keeping the texture from solidworks, unfortunately its SolidWorks import function is broken and they wont be fixing it any time soon.

The other option is to use 3D studio (.3ds) files which you can have separate textures.

Is there any way to convert the SolidWorks .part files into .3ds files while retaining the texturing applied by the solidworks program?

If not, is there any program that has a built in library of textures that I could import in a 3D mesh, easily texture it, and export out as a .3ds file?

Thanks

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You can see if the free 10-day trial of this SolidWorks add-in can export your object with textures (if your university computers will let you install it).

There are a load of other SolidWorks file export add-ins at that site, with free trial versions.

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Oh hey, i saw that earlier but when i saw the $195 price tag on it, well, that kinda put it out of the question. Though, if there's a 10 day trial, that should be just perfect! Thanks – Faken Oct 19 '10 at 2:14
@Faken: You're welcome. Hope it works for you. – paradroid Oct 19 '10 at 2:27
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Have you tried renaming the texture files to DOS style 8.3 filenames before exporting the .3DS file from SolidWorks? If this solves your problem, I am surprised that SolidWorks doesn't do that automatically (.3DS is a common CAD exchange format, but it's ancient).

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Hmm, for some reason my solidworks doesn't have the option to export as a .3ds...I'm using a university's educational license though. – Faken Oct 19 '10 at 1:44
@Faken: What about .obj format? – paradroid Oct 19 '10 at 1:59
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