CompuServe Messages

Kevin: It has been my experience that there is no predictable way to make sure that the faces have the normals pointing in the same direction unless you make all of the faces 3 sided and contstruct them in a counterclockwise fashion when looking at the object from the viewing side (outside or inside). This is rather pointless, in my opinion, since your client will probably want to have models that use interior and exterior shots and getting this all sorted out isn't worth the time. (If blocksolid does this for four sided 3d faces they are in for a suprise…). It is much simpler to just define all of the materials as two sided… this increases rendering time somewhat, but doesn't require a computer modeler to sit at the computer trying to figure out what side of what face is up in AutoCAD. In this way, you let the cheapest per hour guy do the work, the computer… Using AME and creating true solids and maintaining their total form (whether you need it or not (e.g. tops and bottoms of walls…) will provide more predictable results. You can also get a copy of dxf23ds from the Asoft forum that will process the dxf file in short order, when compared to loading it into 3DS, welding, and unifying all of the faces. You should also create objects by layer… if there is going to be scaled texture maps on each wall, for example (e.g. brick) then you need to make each wall direction (N,S,E,W) on a separate layer so that each wall can be mapped in 3DS individually. This isn't entirely necessary, but it would help the 3DS operator. They should have a long talk with whoever is going to do the work. C#