Modeling: Accuracy In Line Drawing

[Alex Morris]

how long a reply do you want? hehe

this has been on the wishlist for max since day one ..........it was never a problem in the dos version.

the best way to deal with this is to do all your 2d drawing in autocad and then import, making sure that your model is really close to the origin in Max.

we tend to convert all the dwg files prior to import so that the origin falls within the model and the units are one generic unit = 1 metre (not sure what the equivalent imperial settings would be).

that way your model has to be huge before you encounter fall-off errors such as the viewports not redrawing or zooming properly or the cursor refusing to snap........someone should put this in a FAQ.

it also gets around light fall-off only going up to something like 250 units when your model is of a whole street etc and other limited spinners in the interface.

[Alex Morris]

oh and did I mention the best function in autocad (sort of)...........OVERKILL in express tools

this deletes all the crap and mistakes of bad drafting out of dwg files and also optimises splines BEFORE import.

try to keep autocad files below about 1.5mb for import or else turn off batches of layers at a time, otherwise max can take hours over the import.

[jeteral]

To Be honest with you I really and truly like to model in AutoCAD alot more than Max, but I like the materials and the Lighting options of Max. I run into a problem though. I have a hard time seperating entities within an object in max that I have created in AutoCAD. For Example. I can model all my walls in Autocad and they are all in fact seperate walls. But when imported into Max all of the walls are considered one object, well sometimes the mapping needs to be different on a section of the wall and not on the other section. but after i do one modifier to a particular part, if i go to modify to total object again, it will disrupt the changes that I made to the first set of walls. This is driving me crazy. because then at that time I could concentrate more on applying materials and lighting than trying to learn how to model in Max ya know.
any help will be appreciated

[Alex Morris]

you can import objects into max as individual entities , by colour, or by layer so that you can separate them out at that stage.

when we started a lot of our guys liked to model in autocad as well, but once you get used to the max pipeline it really is a lot easier and flexible to create the 3d in max. The only exception to that I would make is for nurbs modelling for which I'd recommend Rhino

[jeteral]

once you have used all of the material slots in max how do you load new slots, i been looking for a while now?

jet

[Alex Morris]

This one catches everyone out at first.

The material editor is only a window onto some[I] of the materials in the scene. You can have as many materials as you like (or want to navigate) in the scene, but the editor can only hold 24 at a time. Replacing materials in the editor does not erase them from the scene!

Thats why the blurscripts for loading blocks of materials at a time are so useful........you can sequentially load all the items 24 at a time using different filters.

To get a complete list you could go to track view and use the filters there, I also find that using the filters in the load material dialogue such as just the ones on the selected object really useful.

Another blurscript selects objects where there is no material applied........useful when you have a very busy scene that someone else has set up.

Hope this helps

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