Use SolidWorks Models in an iBook

Several months ago, Apple announced some major initiatives in electronic publishing, particularly for the primary and secondary school "e-textbook" market. As part of that initiative, Apple launched their free "iBooks Author" product.

iBooks Author allows anyone with a Mac (sorry, PC lovers) to create compelling content in the form of an iBook. This format works really well with the incredibly-popular iPad device, and lots of people outside the "school textbook" market have been interested in the platform. It's really quite easy to include videos, interactive widgets, and 3D models into an iBook.

If you're interested in exploring the iBook format, as a SolidWorks user you'll probably want to know how to get your models into iBooks Author. It turns out that the Mac supports Collada at the operating-system level, and anyone can preview and spin around Collada 3D models in recent versions of OS X. That being the case, Collada is also supported in iBooks...and it's the only format.

How do you get SolidWorks files into Collada? There are a few ways. The simplest is to use the "Save As Collada" plug-in from labs.solidworks.com. The ad-in at SolidWorks Labs is provided "as-is, no warranty expressed or implied..." and it works for some people. It hasn't been updated for a long time, though, so there's a very good chance it won't work for you. Don't despair, because there is another way.

It's now possible to save models from 3DVIA.com into Collada format. In order to make that option available, you need to have a paid 3DVIA.com account (not expensive). After uploading the model to 3DVIA.com (in SolidWorks, go to File > Publish To 3DVIA.com...) you log into 3DVIA.com from the web interface and Save As Collada. Personally, I love to use 3DVIA.com as-is for general publishing of models to iPhone and iPad, but if you need Collada format for iBooks, this option works very well. Since you can also publish models from 3DVIA Composer to 3DVIA.com, you can get them into iBooks as well using this same method.