OTOY Forums

Well, a student version of Solidworks doesn't export to many filetypes, but even a full fledged SW version only exports:

Part, Lib Feat Part, Part Templates, Form Tool, Parasolid, Parasolid Binary, IGES, STEP, ACIS, VDAFS, VRML, STL, eDrawings, Adobe Portable Document Format, Universal 3D, 3D XML, Adobe Photoshop Files, Adobe Illustrator Files, Microsoft XAML, Catia graphics, ProE Part, JPEG, HCG, HOOPS HSF, Dxf, Dwg, Tif.

Unfortunately, apart from the native Part files, I don't think any of those file types retain the materials associated with the model.

So, unless you plan to make a plug-in (like Hypershot and Maxwell Render), I'm guessing Solidworks support is out of the question?

You could always export to STL and import into Blender (free and open source) and then export as an Object. Just think of Blender as your exporter.

Yes either stl or vrml are possible export formats from SW to set up in Blender for export to Octane as obj.
I have used vrml for Lux and Indigo exporter scripts successfully but only mesh colour comes across not textures. Stl does not even have colour and also usually requires to have doubles removed...
I am not sure SW SE allows stl or vrml export?
There is however a collada 1.4 exporter at SWlabs that does export SW colours and textures with UV's and they will load into Blender 2.49 although the result is not entirely without error in my experience.
Realview materials arent exported although someone enterprising might be able to something sometime with the SW API.
The mesh resolution exported is set by the Image Quality slider in SW Options/Document Properties.
See here for the add-in. http://labs.solidworks.com/Products/Pro ... ladaexport
I think this will work with SW09 student edition if you have it although this is not stated. SE is usually the last sp of the previous release so it should be compatible with the SW2008sp5 requirement.
If in doubt contact your SW VAR first.
If Octane gets Collada support it may be quite useful for SW users although they will probably still want to do preparation of their scenes in Blender anyway. Blender is very handy for missions like this. It may well be that Octane requires sharp edges to be identified for normals calcs and there is a quick way to do this using Blender's EdgeSplit modifier.
BTW I have asked about future Collada 1.5 support for SW but not received an answer...
HTH

Note: SW Premium has a module ScanTo3d that allows export of .obj and .3ds and there are commercial add-ins available to export these formats as well.
I am not sure about texture support though.