Importing FBX from SW Visualize always includes extras

Question

First time posting here and self-taught over the past few years so I apologize if my terminology isn't correct!

I work for a company and am creating product photos for marketing. I am receiving files from engineering directly in order to speed up the product launch pipeline and to reduce how many samples we need to manufacture.

My current workflow is to have them use Solidworks Visualize to export an FBX file for me. I then import this into my studio scene Align, assign materials, and capture the photos

Where my issues lie are that importing the FBX there is always horrible topology and thousands more triangles than needed, making these fairly simple parts almost impossible to manipulate.

Part 2, they always have an empty that seems to have positional data of how the components relate to each other. Deleting this explodes the components away from each other causing a huge time loss in rebuilding the part. For examples, screws, washers, bolts, panels all go there own separate ways.

These parts also live within a bunkspeed root and no matter what cannot be removed from that grouping.

My main question after all of that, is there a better wya to receive these engineering models? Is there some option I'm missing during import that would help clean them up and give me easier control over the models?

Answer 1

Importing the FBX there is always horrible topology and thousands more triangles than needed*

This seems to imply that the triangulation is happening on import, which is certainly not the case. Blender is simply reading what is already written inside the FBX file.

If you are unhappy with the results, you should change export settings on the source software, there is not much you can do after the fact in Blender.

Coming from a solid based CAD software like Solidworks I you may be able to reduce polygon count by adjusting export resolution, but I certainly would never expect good or even average quality topology.

As for assemblies, those are also part of the original structure of the source file, and created on export. They are probably preserved because recreating them by hand would be far more trouble if they were required, than deleting them if not.

As for the "exploding" part, if you don't want them, select all objects and press Alt + P, then choose Unparent > Clear Parent and Keep Transforms before proceeding. Then delete the undesired empties

Answer 2

RE: Your problem with the mesh triangulation is because SolidWorks is a CAD software, FBX is a polygon mesh format. It has to do some kind of conversion, hence the bad topo. Pretty sure it just comes with the territory.

Probably a good idea to add a Weld modifier at the beginning to make sure you've got no doubled verts, but it might not always be necessary.

You can fix this after import, with a Decimate Modifier set to Planar with 1 degree Angle Limit. That is perfect for cleaning up cad models.

Before:

After:

That makes it a bit more manageable.