PLM community > File viewers > Documents/images  Electrical CAD  General purpose

File viewers for mechanical CAD/CAM formats

Note    Third-party applications are listed as a convenience, but the listing is not necessarily an endorsement of the supplier or product. We do not receive compensation for any listing, have not tested these products, nor do we provide support for any product listed. We would appreciate learning of any additions or corrections to make this list more useful. By the way, we're certain that many of the product names on these pages are trademarks of other companies, and we make no claim to any of them.

Actify SpinFire Reader can be used to view SpinFire Professional .3D files:

http://www.actify.com/v2/products/SFReader/index.htm

Autodesk has offered DWG as a drawing standard, similar to how Adobe has established PDF as a document publishing standard. Autodesk's free viewer is DWG TrueView:

http://www.autodesk.com/dwgtrueview

More interesting is the Autodesk Design Review software product for DWG and Inventor files:

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/index?siteID=123112&id=4086277

Axemble's MyCAD viewer can view SolidWorks, DWG and DXF files (and it's also available in French):

http://www.mycadservices.fr/mycad/easysite/go/048-000015-001/mycadviewer-free/viewer-mycad

Bentley Systems' MicroStation (DGN), as well as DWG, files can be read using the Bentley View utility:

http://www.bentley.com/en-US/Products/Bentley+View/

Delcam offers free PowerSHAPE-e CAD modeling and PS-Exchange file translation software. These both can open an impressive variety of mechanical CAD formats, including AutoCAD, Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire, SolidWorks, Solid Edge, CATIA, Unigraphics, Parasolids, IGES, STEP, and others.

http://www.powershape.com/general/downloads/software_dl.asp

Both FastCAD and EasyCAD applications, by Evolution Computing, create files that can be opened with their CADView software:

http://www.fastcad.com/x-view7.html

Informative Graphics publishes the aptly-named free dwg viewer utility, which opens DWG, DWF and DXF files:

http://www.infograph.com/products/dwgviewer/

New! Kubotek's CAD formats, KeyCreator and Cadkey, can be viewed using the no-charge Kubotek Spectrum Lite (the paid version of Kubotek Spectrum also opens Autocad, SolidWorks and Pro/ENGINEER files):

http://www.kubotekusa.com/products/kubotek_spectrum.html

The Siemens free Solid Edge Viewer can also open DXF and DWG files:

https://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/forms/solidEdgeViewer.shtml

SolidWorks Corporation publishes a free SolidWorks viewer:

http://www.solidworks.com/pages/products/solutions/viewer.html

SolidWorks also offers a free eDrawings publisher tool, and separate reader, which allows many different CAD applications to publish to a common CAD drawing format. Formats include SolidWorks, Autocad, Inventor, Pro/ENGINEER, CATIA, Unigraphics and CoCreate's OneSpace:

http://www.edrawingsviewer.com/index.html

New! SpaceClaim Corporation has a free SpaceClaim Professional file viewer:

http://www.spaceclaim.com/getdoc/18fc8cea-f1c3-4d0f-8ae0-8ec850365884/Free-Viewer.aspx

If you use ACIS 3D Modeler, you can download the HOOPS 3D Part Viewer for ACIS from Spatial Corporation here:

http://www.spatial.com/products/download.html

Users of STEP (ISO-10303) can get the free IDA-STEP Viewer and IGES2STEP Viewer and Converter at:

http://www.ida-step.net/index.php?id=46

http://www.iges2step.narod.ru/

Regrettably, IMSI/Design confirms that they do not publish a viewer for their TurboCAD files.

080429.1301