I’ve been perusing PARTcommunity and found access to an incredible number of 3D part models.
This large repository of 3D models has somehow eluded us, but it is significant. With well over 300,000 members and over 23M downloads, it is clearly a very popular site.
What’s interesting to me is that the site provides access to:
Millions of 3D & 2D CAD models of supplier- and standard parts for SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Autodesk Inventor, CATIA, NX, Creo, u.v.m. for free download.
That’s correct: suppliers are providing 3D models of at least some of their parts. From these you could do a number of things:
- Potentially create a replacement for a broken part using the obtained 3D model
- Compare your part to the original intended 3D model
- Develop an add-on and determine if it fits with an original part
- Modify an existing part for a new purpose
PARTcommunity says they currently have 367 3D CAD catalogs online. I took a look to see how it works. Here we see a M100M, M200M, M300M, M400M Manifold for a valve assembly from BIMBA. That’s a pretty specific part and if one required one of these, it’s very good to know that you can easily find it.
PARTcommunity permits downloading of these 3D models, presumably with the permission of the commercial owner. In the case of this manifold, I found I could download it in virtually any CAD format:
- 3D Studio MAX (3D)
- Allplan 2008 (3D)
- ARCHICAD >=19 (3D)
- ASCON C3D (3D)
- AutoCAD >=V14 (3D)
- Autodesk Revit 2015 (3D)
- Autodesk Revit >=2012 (3D)
- Aveva PDMS / Marine (3D)
- BeckerCAD (3D)
- Bentley AECOsim (3D)
- Caddy++ SAT-V4.2 (3D)
- Catia (Macro)>=V5 (3D)
- Catia >=V5 (3D)
- Catia IUA V4 (3D)
- CoCreate Modeling >=2007 (3D)
- COLLADA (3D)
- Creo Elements/Direct Modeling >=17.0 (3D)
- Creo Elements/Pro 5.0 (3D)
- Creo Parametric 1.0 (3D)
- Creo Parametric 2.0 (3D)
- DWG AUTOCAD VERSION 2004 – 2006 (3D)
- DWG AUTOCAD VERSION 2007 – 2009 (3D)
- DWG AUTOCAD VERSION 2010 – 2012 (3D)
- DWG AUTOCAD VERSION 2013 (3D)
- DXF AUTOCAD VERSION 2004 – 2006 (3D)
- DXF AUTOCAD VERSION 2007 – 2009 (3D)
- DXF AUTOCAD VERSION 2010 – 2012 (3D)
- DXF AUTOCAD VERSION 2013 (3D)
- IFC2x Edition 3 (3D)
- IFC2x mesh (3D)
- IGES (3D)
- Inventor 2011 (3D)
- Inventor 2012 (3D)
- Inventor 2013 (3D)
- Inventor 2014 (3D)
- Inventor 2015 (3D)
- Inventor 2016 (3D)
- JT (3D)
- KOMPAS (3D)
- Mechanical Desktop >=V5 (3D)
- MegaCAD SAT-V2.0 (3D)
- Metafile 3D (PS3) V2 (3D)
- Microstation (3D) (3D)
- NX 10 (3D)
- NX 11 (3D)
- NX 7 (3D)
- NX 7.5 (3D)
- NX 8 (3D)
- NX 8.5 (3D)
- NX 9 (3D)
- OBJ (WaveFront) (3D)
- One Space Modeling >=2007 (3D)
- Parasolid Binary V15 (3D)
- Parasolid Text V15 (3D)
- PARTjava (3D)
- PDF 3D 7.01 (3D)
- PRO-Desktop (3D)
- Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 5.0 (3D)
- SAT 7.0 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST2 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST3 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST4 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST5 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST6 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST7 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST8 (3D)
- Solid Edge ST9 (3D)
- SolidWorks (Macro) >=2001+ (3D)
- SolidWorks >=2006 (3D)
- STEP AP203 (3D)
- STEP AP214 (3D)
- STL (3D)
- Tribon M3 (3D)
- Trimble Sketchup (3D)
- VisiCad (3D)
- VRML >=V1.0 (3D)
- VX (Varimetrix) >=V5.0 (3D)
Surely one of those will work for you.
The site also offers the ability for individuals to upload and share part designs, of which there seems to be many participants. They call this portion of the site, “PARTcloud.net”, but it operates in a similar manner.
This is not the only place where you can download 3D part models, but it seems to be a very extensive option that should be added to your list of places to search when seeking a particular design.
Via PARTcommunity
