Using matlab to compare solidworks part files without opening solidworks

A short background on me. I am new to the forum and i have not used matlab in years. I am a mechanical design engineer and have a degree in Mechanical engineering. For the past few years I have been finding ways to automate my job through programming all self taught.

What i am trying to find out is with matlab would i be able to read groups of thousands of solidworks cad files and retrieve the native files topology for use in further comparison or the cad files. In short i am essentially slowly working towards trying to create a machine learning neural network of existing cad files to allow for the creation of better naming conventions and avoidance of creating multiple instances of the same part.

I have created a couple processes but the ether require each part being opened in solidworks and then run the topology or it requires the file to be converted to a step file, and C# ins't a good platform for machine leaning.

Answer 1

[John D'Errico]

Then you have no choice in the matter if you must do this entirely in MATLAB.

You need to open each file into MATLAB. So this means you need to learn the format specs for these files.

Then you will need to develop methods to compare the various shapes, again in MATLAB, somehow quantifying the difference between two objects so described.

I won't say it will be easy. In fact, I'll bet you could spend a few months just doing the work. Worth at least the equivalent of a Masters thesis, given that you will need to do a fair amount of innovation along the way.

Answer 2

[Joseph Pickens]

That is what what i feared and the reason i had to convert the files .STEP

Answer 3

[Walter Roberson]

Nearly all of the posts refer to the Solidworks link -- which is a live link that talks to Solidworks. One of the posts refers to http://www.finitebusiness.net/solutions.php?page=solutions&pid=1 which is a Mathworks toolbox which also looks to have a live link.

The Solidworks link can be used to export solidworks assemblies as XML files. That fact hints that possibly you could use solidworks first to export all of the assemblies as XML and then later process them.

https://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/294365-solidworks-wont-create-simmechanics-link-even-it-is-available-on-addins#answer_228138 Solidworks only exports assemblies, not part by part

http://pveng.com/home/reference-information/api-programming-blog/#SolidWorksFileFormat gives some information on some of the several solidworks file formats, including providing some macros to examine some of the files.