How to get Pro/ENGINEER solids into Blender
There may be other ways but the concept described here works at least. If you no better ways, let me know. Feel free to move this information to a better place under a CCBySA and or GFDL and let me know so I can link from here and remove the text.
Get your model exported from Pro/ENGINEER in stereolithography STL format in ASCII, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STL_(file_format) for more info on STL.
Import the file in Blender, File > Import > STL...
- Do your lights, build your virtual studio, attach a material and since the chance is big it is a metal object you can change Mirror Trans and continue fine tuning your environment.
- If you follow normal procedures you may run into problems because you can't get the object smooth. This is caused by a so called 'non manifold' mesh. Such a mesh is characterized by more than two faces sharing one edge. Think of a 'Y', it has three legs. If you extrude the Y-legs in Z-direction you get three faces sharing one edge and it becomes impossible to calculate an outside, try it yourself by assigning an outside to one side of a face and go round... You end up with one face having two outsides! So how to clean up this mesh/mess? The strips below show the results of the steps, first is not smooth.
- Select object RMB
> Edit Mode
> Select > Non Manifold
> Mesh > Vertices > Remove Doubles
> Object Mode
> Editing (F9) > Set Smooth (second picture)
> Tab Modifiers > Add Modifier > Edge Split (third picture)
- Add material properties, etc. (right example).
The above pictures are citations according to copyright law with rights of Biocomp, Promaton and ViaISN.