No solids - urgent

[ledeni]

Hi all!

I'm about to lose my mind. My school mate made very detailed construction in rhino. Profesor sad it has to be .dwg, Autocad. So he imported it in 3Ds Max and then exported in dwg. Profesor is still not happy because there are no solids. I'm trying to fix that but with no success. This forum is my last hope. :cry: Please help!

[Cad64]

You'll never get solids exporting from Max. Your model will always come in as a polyface mesh. Solids are an Autocad thing, 3DS Max doesn't know what Solids are.

As far as converting the mesh to a solid goes, this subject has been discussed here many times and there has never been a definitive answer that I can remember. :unsure:

And why are you so worried about your school mates project. That's his problem not yours. Was he told to create his project in Autocad? I would say he needs to start over and do it correctly this time, according to the instructions that were given.

[SEANT]

Rhino can export closed Polysurfaces – solids – via ACIS (*.sat). These can then import to AutoCAD with the _acisin command.

There are a couple of caveats however:

All Layer information will be lost.

AutoCAD’s ISOLINES setting may need to be modified to allow better visibility of the solid in 2D Wireframe mode.

If the Rhino solid includes freeform surfaces beyond the capabilities of AutoCAD, there will likely be limited manipulation and/or analysis.

[JD Mather]

As far as converting the mesh to a solid goes, this subject has been discussed here many times and there has never been a definitive answer that I can remember. :unsure:

Open the 3ds file in Mechanical Desktop. Save as IGES. Open the IGES in MDT or Inventor. Stitch the surface file to a solid (amstitch in MDT).

But 3ds files are heavily faceted and generally of little use in engineering other than for reference.

An alternative would be IGES from Rhino and open in Inventor. Stitch or Sculpt into solid.
Inventor LT can be downloaded (in some locations) for free from http://labs.autodesk.com

[Cad64]

Open the 3ds file in Mechanical Desktop. Save as IGES. Open the IGES in MDT or Inventor. Stitch the surface file to a solid (amstitch in MDT).

Well, 3DS Max can export to IGES format, so I guess you don't need Mechanical Desktop. You could go straight from Max to Inventor to Autocad.