Hi Gang,
Just did some 3d Modeler for mac google search and I found that Rhino is porting over.
http://community.irhino3d.com/
With all these modeler tools available, is anyone using EI with Rhino on the PC. Or even using Rhino on PC and sending the model to EI on a mac? Lastly is it as fun as EIM?
For those of you who may ask what my modeling goal may be I work from CAD to organic CA. I prefer robots.
Thanks.
I don’t use EI on the PC but use Rhino (both PC and Mac version) with EI to great success.
Rhino is a fabulous modeler which is extremely capable and works well with EI. I still find EIM’s interface and workflow much more to my liking but Rhino is more robust and more capable, at least in the area of surfaces.
In EI and EIM ‘Y is up’ where-as in just about every CAD/nurbs modeler Z is up. I export as ACIS from Rhino, bring into EIM anf mesh there and export as fact. EIM’s mesher plays much better than Rhino’s with EI. You can export obj from Rhino and use OBJ2Fac and get good result. I just prefer meshing from EIM.
Forget about much edits in EIM as Rhino’s resolution is lower than EIM’s and EIM consistently complains about any attempts to work on Rhino models. ViaCad, anothe rgreat nurbs modeler can work on Rhino imports for the most part. You get used to this but just writing it here it really isn’t an optimum situation where EIM is so picky about it’s precision…and really why so many have had trouble with it. It expects perfection on input and use.
I hope this will be dealt with with the newest ACIS version other-wise EIM will never gain the foothold in the 3D world it deserves.
This is the biggest difference between Rhino and EIM…Rhino is very loose on input. It’ll take anything and attempt to give you a model back, which it usually will. EIM want’s (can want) you to turn an exact amount of turns, point at the sun and spit a certain number of times before it lets you do certain functions…but when you learn the secrets it’s a fabulous tool.
Hopefully the new release will be far more friendly to the uninitiated.
Hi,
I also us Rhino on th PC and EI on the MAC. And I also go Rhino->ACIS->EIM->EIAS.
I do not do much modelling at all. I usually use Rhino to bring CAD models over to EI, and that works veryvery good. If you have ever gotten an IGES file from your client, Rhino is the tool. It is able to sort out duplicate faces, and will stich hundrets of single patches to one continous surface in seconds - do not try that in EIM. It has great analysis tools and is really easy to use. The only weakness beeing its tesselation engine. To get agood and clean mesh you really need to up the settings which usually results in massive polygon objects. So at this point EIM wins definately as it provides same results (shading wise) with only 1/4th of the polygons.
I have alsways suggested EIM to become “Rhino on the MAC”… Too late 
Jens
one more question…
Going the same way as Jens describes I always run into the problem, that my Mac-EIM
does`nt open my PC-Rhino-SAT Files. Opening and saving it with a tool like TextWrangler
on Mac seems to be the workkaround. Does anyone know a way to do that directly or do
I make something wrong. I´m still on a G4 2x1,25 Mac.
I also found ViaCad to be a good alternative for converting between CAD-files and EIAS.
Cheers
Tom
Yes, that is correct. EIM will not open .sat files directly.
ViaCad is very particular on solid objects coming from Rhino. They have to be completely water-tight or come in as a bunch of seperate surfaces and have to be dealt with in ViaCad. EIM has a better mesher in my opinion.
Hi Paul:
Is there a particular version of ACIS sat that EIM will import?
I’m just starting to Learn the OSX Rhino (wip) and when I try to import the ACIS sat file into EIM it is grayed out.
Is there a trick to getting it to work or maybe cuz it’s a Rhino beta?
thanx
k!
I’ve never had luck with EIM importing ACIS without some conversion to the in-coming file.
I use TextWrangler (free download) open and just ‘save a copy’ - EIM will now see the file from either Rhino Mac or PC, makes no difference. Obviously there is a reason why it behaves like this and someone with a little more indepth understanding can explain it.
Once in EIM you will need to mirror and rotate 90 degrees as in EIM, Y is up and in Rhino, Z is up.
At least when .sat files come from a PC i had the same problems. I always use a free tool called “Filetype” on the Mac. I sets the correct filetype and creator for .sat files. You can set up a preset by loading in a .sat file created in EIM and use that as a blueprint to change all other files. Works great.
Oh, and the latest .sat Version EIM can currently handle is v.6 (I am not quite sure. Otherwise try v.4). Newer .sat files cannot be loaded in. Hopefully that will change with a new ACIS kernel 
Yes, sorry, forgot that step. I open the SAT with BBedit and just save it again. Than it works. Seems to be a text formatting issue, or a missing ressource fork. The files as they are work very well.
Jens
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