Viewing STEP files with CAD Exchanger

CAD Exchanger is a new program written by Roman Lygin designed to ease CAD model interchange by providing file viewing and translation for a variety of 3-D CAD formats.

The beta currently supports importing, viewing, and exporting IGES, STEP, STL, and Open CASCADE BRep files; in the future, more formats will be supported.  It is based on Open CASCADE; it is currently free but not open source.

CAD Exchanger does not currently support measuring.  I prefer that the CAD Exchanger team concentrate on adding and improving its file translation abilities; there are already fine free solutions for measuring STEP files.

I tried CAD Exchanger using the same Norcomp HD26M model I used with other CAD programs.  The user interface does not currently support drag-and-drop.  The HD26M model loaded in a reasonable time; 3D performance (rotate, zoom, pan) is good, even on a laptop with crappy Intel graphics.  CAD Exchanger provides a nice selection of pre-defined views.  I didn’t try exporting.

Here is a picture of CAD Exchanger in action:

HD26M model in CAD Exchanger

Related posts:

1. Viewing STEP files with PowerSHAPE-e
2. Viewing STEP files with IDA-STEP
3. Viewing STEP files
4. Viewing STEP files with CoCreate Personal Edition
5. Viewing STEP files with Alibre Design Xpress