CompuServe Thread

Hi Andy, My co-author, Phil Miller, is better at the intricacies of ACAD to 3DS transfer than I am but I'll take a shot. First off, you need nothing extra to transfer ACAD drawings to 3DS. Just save your drawing as a DXF file and load it into 3DS with the DXF button active in the Load Dialog. There are a few rules that you need to follow to ensure success. Things such as organizing drawing layers to correspond to 3DS objects, using closed PLINEs for most shapes, using SOLMESH on your AME models, etc. We have a whole chapter about using ACAD with 3DS in our book "Inside 3D Studio." It's not too tough, especially if you already have some experience with AutoCAD. Steven

Much of your AutoCAD geometry can be exported using AutoCAD's built-in DXF translator, and imported directly into AutoCAD. For someone familiar with AutoCAD it's a great way to create models, which is what I do all the time, in architecture. Most of the work is already done if you have plans or elevations, or better yet 3D models. I just wrote an article on the process of moving data from AutoCAD to 3DS. If you are interested, let me know and I can upload the file to you for perusal… gary

Keep in mind that you're Autocad work must be SHADEABLE if you want it to be a surface in 3DS (at least as far as I can tell). I have 3D plines in Acad that I would love to get into 3ds (they are joined to form polygons) but as far as I know it can't be done. So you're best off drawing with 3dfaces, meshes etc. Doug.