CompuServe Messages

Here is little warning for you all……. beware of the units command. This is probably more of a problem in "metrified" Europe than "imperial" America. For all you feet & inches types there is a downside to metric units… what (especially in ACAD) is 1 unit ? A metre, a centimetre or a millimetre, I get drawings from architects in all three categories. On a recent aiport job in order to maintain a 1 to 1 relationship between the 2D drawings and my 3DS model I used the "Unit Setup" "1 unit = " box to redfine the scale within 3DS so that measurements corresponded. Virtually at the end of the whole job when redoing a section with modifications I noticed some severe shadow anomalies I hadn't seen before although the same project file was in the programme with no obvious problems. It turned out that I must have only ever rendered that particular file across the net, never locally! The difference is that a project file saved for net render purpose does not include the "units=" parameter and when that project is reloaded, if the the original had a units= of 0.1 then the model is loaded in at a tenth of its original size. My original model exceeded the size of the 3DS limits (1,000,000 units), that was dumb of me! but the rescaling caused it to fall back within acceptable limits and the shadows rendered correctly. The major problem this may cause people is that it will affect procedural texture scaling. So if you get a net render back which doesn't resemble local rendering you know where to look for the culprit. Grahame