Hello,
Whenever I need to draw my own 3d model of a component I typically use Solidworks and then export the file as .STEP AP214 and import into Altium. This worked flawlessly. Recently I had to use STEP file which was delivered by a client of mine, who is using Autodesk Inventor for 3d modelling and it seems that there is a problem with model colours. STEP model is entirely white when imported into Altium. The problem is, that the same file when opened with Solidworks is colored properly. And if I save the same model in Solidworks and then import it into Altium, colors are fine.
So there seems to be some problem with the way how Inventor formats the STEP file, so that the Altium cannot interpret the colors incorrectly. Color information is definitely not lost, because Soliworks interprets them correctly. I was thinking about switching to Inventor for all sorts of modelling, but proper color display of 3d features in Altium is very important for me (appearance is very important for many customers, especially those with no engineering background). I can't justify keeping to pay solidworks subscription fees only for re-saving STEP files so that color information is saved in a format that Altium can understand.
So the question is: have you experienced such problems as I did, and if so - did you find any solution to that? Maybe there's something off with my Altium Designer configuration? Do you know of any free or very low cost software that can read step files or inventor .ipt format and output a STEP file correct for Altium?
