Opening Orca hull in solidworks

[Andy]

I was wondering if anyone had any tips for opening the Orca generated hulls as a Rhino file in Solidworks?  Solidworks is supposed to be able to open Rhino 3dm files.  When I tried to open a hull generated by Orca, I get an error message which states something to the effect of "no surface or solid geometry associated with file".  However, if I save as an iges, it opens fine in Solidworks.  Does anyone no why this happens?  Is there a way to fix it? 

Solidworks talks big about being able to directly open rhino geometry, and even able to edit in Rhino, and have it update in Solidworks.  This would be perfect for designing a hull, but I can't make it work so far.

Thanks,
Andy 

[lleibman]

Hi Andy,

We are not aware of any specific issues related to opening Rhino models with Orca-generated geometry in SolidWorks. A couple of thoughts/things to try:

1. First just to determine that the issue is specifically related to Orca-generated geometry, are you able to open a Rhino file in Solid Works containing only surface geometry generated with the native Rhino commands?

2. Assuming test 1 above is successful, it would be good to know if the issue is related to the specific geometry. Was the test with the Orca-generated geometry using the Planing Hull Assistant? If so, try the same with the Sailboat Assistant and see if the behavior is any different.

3. Lastly, the Orca-generated hulls have a curvature continuous boundary condition at the forefoot (which in general is desired). I've seen this cause a problem in some CAD tools, although I don't know why using an IGES transfer would make any difference in that case. However, you can move the corner control point at the vessel forefoot a little bit and try again to open it in SolidWorks as a last test.

Let us know how these tests work out.

Thanks,

Larry