CompuServe Thread

first save your file in acad as a dxf then use dxf23ds to create a 3ds file. then you can bring in your model into 3dstudio. dxf23ds is available here somewhere. 3dstudio is probably your best bet for the price. sherwood

Hugh, although you can't load a .dwg directly into 3DS, there are two different options for bringing a .dxf file in from Acad: 1) If the file contains more than just non-block'd 3D faces, you'll need to use the DXF23DS.EXE converter (available here in DL3 as DXF3DS.ZIP). 2) If the file just contains 3D meshes, 3DSr1 will load them directly (without blocks). Option #1 works with just about any 3D entity, Acad can throw at it, including polylines with varying width and nested blocks. If you have any questions about the process while doing it, feel free to ask… That's what we're here for. – Gary

Hugh, First, go out and spend $70,000 for a Personal Iris and Alias Power Animator. Spend several months getting up to speed and then spend another $150,000 on hardware and software upgrades to make it really useable. Then, spend about $15,000 in video equipment so you have some sort of output. Second, buy 3DS for $3,000 and run it on standard platform hardware which is easy to upgrade and support. Get FREE tech support from the folks who write the code here on CIS. Interface with all your other PC software like AutoCAD, CHAOS, Animator and Animator pro. Eventually, get it all into Windows. Uh, on second thought, maybe you should do the second thing first and forget altogether about the first thing. -Doug