CompuServe Messages

Jeff, The program John's referring to is AutoVision (kind of an "AutoShade 3.0" with a raytracer instead of Renderman with most of what Visual Link contained tossed in). It can be used for assinging materials to AutoCAD models and then shipping them out to 3DS, or bringing in a 3DS mesh to for (slow) raytracing, but do not get lulled into thinking you can keep going back and forth – there are several inconsistancies that will drive you crazy (loosing all your smoothing groups tops the list). If you can get Visual Link cheap, then you'll basically have the AutoVision mapping abilities you want without shelling out the $800. – Phil p.s. although you can OSnap mapping coordinates in AutoCAD you must define ALL the points for the given map type each time you enter specific points – you can not use selected points to move, stretch, scale, or rotate existing mapping 🙁