I-DEAS --> 3DS Max

[ilay]

Hi,

one question, if I may:
Do you know of a way to import 3d geometry (solids) from I-DEAS to 3DS Max WITHOUT suffering in resolution? What I experience now is that a perfectly smooth solid in I-DEAS with all kinds of contours and shapes, when taken in 3DS it gets full of 'jaggies' and cylinders look like they are made of many flat planes together, instead of a round cylinder. Is it possible?

Thank you.

 

[RCDLtd]

Max isn't great at understanding trimmed surfaces from other systems, so will often untrim them leaving the underlying surface and a trim boundary that then need to be "put back together" once inside Max.

For me I just use Max for rendering and animating. ie. I use I-DEAS for all the modelling, so I generate STL files of the models in I-DEAS and import these into Max. Much lighter data for Max to use. If you leave the weld and smooth options on the Max import then the result is generally farily smooth and complete.

 

[ilay]

Thank you for your help, but there is one small thing that I don't quite understand. How do you make STL files in I-DEAS. The only options I have are:
.set, .igs, .stp, .xml, .prt, .wrl and such.

Any comments?

 

[RCDLtd]

File, Export, Rapid Prototype File.

By default the export is in inches, which will give you an incorrect result if you're modelling units are metric. To correct this edit one of the "slannn.dat" files in the <INSTL>/geo folder and replace the "IN" with "MM" and use the editted file in the export options window so that the STL file is written using metric units.

 

[ilay]

Thank you very much for your help, it works like a dream!