LEGO in Solidworks

[Vicanic]

I am a CAD designer, I use solidworks. I was wondering if there happens to be a collection of LEGO bricks in solidworks format, or any importable format like a parasolid or something? I'd like to do some LEGO assemblies in solidworks, but I'd rather not build the entire collection of bricks myself, from scratch. I figure some has to have done something like this before. Or is there any way to convert the LDraw library to agis, parasolid, or something else? thanks

[Lalror]

So far there is no useable way to get official lego brick models into other CAD programs. Lego has a tool which acts as a plugin for Maya that contains every single lego element in every single form but so far it looks like they will keep that tool to themselves. I think there is a way to export pieces from MlCad or one of those programs but the results are very messy and in the end its not worth the work. I was actually really interested in your post when I saw it cause I have been looking for a lego minifig model to use in making a small game with Unity 3d and I have been looking for one for some time. I finally ended up modeling it myself.

~Lalror

[legolijntje]

I was thinking the same some days ago. I never used any cad tool (except sr3d builder ), but I was thinking about making some parts for other cad tools myself. As said before, I never used any cad tool, but I want to try to make some parts in Maya and make them available for everyone to download. I know it's possoble, just look HERE, but will I be skilled enough...

Well, this is still only an idea ...

[Lalror]

My personal preference for cad programs is Blender. I was able to pick it up faster than Maya and its also free which is always a plus. If you want to, thats fine with me. However in the long run it would seem rather tedious for something not so important. If we could petition for Lego to release their brick files that would open up a whole new world for us fans, but I doubt that will happen any time soon.

One last statement. GIVE LDD MORE EXPORT OPTIONS. It is so annoying to see nice clean meshes that I can't use in any normal CAD program.

[escortmad79]

I made some bricks for AutoCAD Inventor myself when I was doing CAD