#what a rat's nest…:)
9 messages in this thread
Careful with the terminology… I thought "rat's nest" was the term used for
collections of polygons not necessarily bound by topological restraints. So 3DS
objects are "rat's nest" databases… there's nothing that prevents the
triangles from being separated in space. As for DXF, are you referring to
polyface meshes made with the PFACE command? If so, the doc says "Programs
that read polyface meshes from DXF would be wise to be as tolerant of odd
vertex and face ordering as AutoCAD is."
Of course, the DXF translation in 3DS is among the best I've ever seen, and
unless we've seen Paul's file, we don't know what might be wrong with it, DXF
being as rigorous and standardized as it is.
(BTW, I was confused by Paul's message. Is he working for Pacific Motion or
LucasArts? You know who Pacific Motion is, right?)
All that error message means is that the rats-nest mesh definition in the
incoming file is invalid.
Yup, I know what PM is.
– G
So, for example, a reference to a vertex that doesn't exist? Or is there some
kind of topological checking going on?
It could be a nonexistant reference or a slew of other things. I haven't read
the DXF spec in over a year so I'm pretty rusty re all that stuff.
– G
John,
Actually, the files I'm writing out to DXF are converted from Prisms software
on the SGI, and I wrote the converter…so they weren't really generated with
the PFACE command, since they don't come from AutoCAD. They're just saved in
the same format in the DXF file (the same kind of format that 3DS writes OUT by
default…). Thanks for jumping in, though.
Please excuse the confusion, since I'm using PM's CIS account, though this
was actually a question from here at THIS work (yep, work for LucasArts now).
PM is pretty much gone, though it still may have a little life left in it.
You gonna be at SIGGRAPH? See you there…
Paul
It sounds like I should have you test the Prisms converter in InterChange for
Windows. We've got an IPAS version of the Prisms loader/saver, too.
What happened to Pacific Motion? A re-run of previous crash-and-burns?
Roger on the crash-and-burns. High expectations and promises, no follow
through and never enough money 🙂
BTW, I got the problem fixed–it wasn't anything I was doing! The guy who
saved out the files in question from Prisms saved them wrong. What I get for
asking before debugging!
Interchange for Windows? Would love to see it! You going to be at SIGGRAPH
(you didn't say)?
Paul
So do you have any idea what's happened to the rights to the products? Will
Terry revive them once again?
Yes, Syndesis will be exhibiting in booth 334 at Siggraph.
I have the rights to the 3D products, and Bill has his for PCA. We're still
deciding what to do.
See you at SIGGRAPH!
Paul