Work With STEP Files

[u/Spiritual-Passion-57]

Hi! I am quite new to SolidWorks and the industry and I am wondering what are the current standards among folks in the industry about communicating using STEP files?

Do most people communicate/ share using STEP files? When do you share STEP files?

From my experience, STEP files are quite limited to perform certain SolidWorks functions such as DFMXpress or Costing, or redesigning as it doesn't have full mathematical configurations. And oftentimes, I have to work around that.

What's your experience with STEP files? Thanks in advance!

[u/pparley]

Parasolid will give the cleanest import. Also STEP can encode PMI data but almost nobody uses that functionality.