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Is there any possibility of a direct import with custom meshing settings for STEP files into Maxwell? Bunkspeed Shot does this really well. It's a total pain modeling in Nurbs and then having to use a third part export program (I use MOI v2) to import the STEP assembly, and export out an OBJ file. My modeling software is NX i-Deas and does not support export of OBJ files directly.

Whilst I'm at it, why can I never achieve a good mesh from a NURBs model? Particularly around fillets.....none of my maps work properly when crossing surfaces. I've looked at the unwrapping/re-meshing software available but I can never get NURBs surfaces that have been exported out of MOI to unwrap correctly.....quite frankly it's a total pain and would not be worth integrating into my workflow even if I could get it to work!

I just wish I could import directly into Maxwell and have the software sort out all my problems for me......wishful thinking I'm sure

hmm.. im am not very familiar with step files, but i know Rhino can import them.

i love modelling with nurbs in Rhino and use them as much as possible, also for exporting to maxwell.
having said that, i also have to mention the great integration that maxwell has in rhino. the plugin is great, and one of the best solutions for rendering from rhino directly.

now there is a lot of talk concerning the rhino mesher (the nurbs to mesh converter), many people complain a lot about it, and the MOI mesher is supposedly much better in creating good meshes.

In my experience it is a lot about settings, and the rhino mesher is indeed complicated in that respect, but not at all incapable. Personally i try to use UV mapping (the nurbs built in mapping coordinates that come with the U and V surface spans) for as much of texturing as possible, as they do not require any or little setup time or projectors. But also using any other mapping type has never caused much trouble either.. i am wondering why you get these inconsistencies across seams.. sounds like "jagged edges" where surface patches are meshed disregarding their attatched/joined neighbours.

not sure how rhino imports step assemblies.. you could download an evaluation version an see if things come in as proper solids/polysurfaces or if you need to do some editing after import.. anyway.. rhino is the tool to render nurbs via maxwell!!

also Jeremy the programmer/moderator of the rhino plugin section of the forum is very helpful and also programs the plugin for solid works, so he should know more than i do concerning .step format.


daniel

Correct me if I'm wrong but Rhino is a surface modeller isn't it? For surfacing I use Alias which then gets exported to a solid modelling package for detail mechanical design. The mesh problem may come from exporting a solid model rather than surfaces (total guess!)

As an industrial design consultancy we need a good hybrid solid/surface modeller. Currently we use iDeas NX which is now a little outdated when it comes to export options.

Does anyone have any experience with Siemens (Unigraphics) NX and Maxwell? Seems like this is the program we will use in the future.

Cloudman wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but Rhino is a surface modeller isn't it? For surfacing I use Alias which then gets exported to a solid modelling package for detail mechanical design. The mesh problem may come from exporting a solid model rather than surfaces (total guess!)

yes rhino has originally been developed as a surface modeller, but by now can work quite well with solids too;
but these are "nurbs solids" aka closed polysurfaces.

and i think you guess is right that if your software exports solids without using a projector to generate uniformal texture coorinates across the different sufaces of the solid before export, you will get random alignment of textures on these.

polynurb wrote:

Cloudman wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but Rhino is a surface modeller isn't it? For surfacing I use Alias which then gets exported to a solid modelling package for detail mechanical design. The mesh problem may come from exporting a solid model rather than surfaces (total guess!)

yes rhino has originally been developed as a surface modeller, but by now can work quite well with solids too;
but these are "nurbs solids" aka closed polysurfaces.

and i think you guess is right that if your software exports solids without using a projector to generate uniformal texture coorinates across the different sufaces of the solid before export, you will get random alignment of textures on these.

Thanks. That would explain it. Anyone know of a way around this? Can you generate uniform UV co-ordinates from the exported solid using Rhino? Rhino reads my STEP files in very well but when I use Rhino's plugin to export my STEP file to Maxwell Studio my maps are still misaligned across surfaces.

Cloudman wrote: Thanks. That would explain it. Anyone know of a way around this? Can you generate uniform UV co-ordinates from the exported solid using Rhino? Rhino reads my STEP files in very well but when I use Rhino's plugin to export my STEP file to Maxwell Studio my maps are still misaligned across surfaces.

yes sure.. once they are in rhino you can use all the tools there are to set them up... the thing with solids is that you can't control them on the component level.. you would need to explode them in order to use native nurb UV texture coordinates.
At least that is the case in rhino, but i don't know any other nurbs modeller that let's you access uv direction/tex.tiling of sub parts of a solid/polysurface.

anyway all the other projectors are three (box, sphere, plane, etc..) and they will just work fine with whatever you import.

you may want to take a look at this tutorial, although it deals with a maxwell specific way of mapping within rhino called "real scale" it gives a good overview of the topic.

http://think.maxwellrender.com/rhino_pl ... e-134.html

Thanks for the tips.

Is there anyone else out there modeling in solids? Would be interested to learn from their workflows.

Cloudman wrote:Is there anyone else out there modeling in solids? Would be interested to learn from their workflows.

We use MicroStation V8i which is a Surface/Solid modeler. Nurbs modeling is pretty good but I'm guessing that Rhino probably does it better. Solid modeling is done through the Parasolid modeling kernel but it does read ACIS solids as well. It can Import/Export the STEP AP203/AP214 file format so if you like I can try exporting your STEP model to Maxwell and see what happens.

MicroStation's Maxwell exporter is a bit old (Maxwell 1.7) but I haven't noticed any issues with texture mapped solids.

Cheers,
Andrew Novinc.

Anyone use Polytrans? Seems to be the answer to my issues.

http://www.okino.com/conv/imp_granite.htm

Nova66 wrote:

Cloudman wrote:Is there anyone else out there modeling in solids? Would be interested to learn from their workflows.

We use MicroStation V8i which is a Surface/Solid modeler. Nurbs modeling is pretty good but I'm guessing that Rhino probably does it better. Solid modeling is done through the Parasolid modeling kernel but it does read ACIS solids as well. It can Import/Export the STEP AP203/AP214 file format so if you like I can try exporting your STEP model to Maxwell and see what happens.

MicroStation's Maxwell exporter is a bit old (Maxwell 1.7) but I haven't noticed any issues with texture mapped solids.

Cheers,
Andrew Novinc.

Thanks for your offer of help At the moment I'm investigating Polytrans as a part of the workflow.

Cloudman wrote:Anyone use Polytrans? Seems to be the answer to my issues.

http://www.okino.com/conv/imp_granite.htm

I bought Polytrans to convert Solidworks files into object...
I never tried to unwarp a model converted with Polytrans.
I had many trouble with the vertex map of my model when loaded into modo for the rendring.
Of course, here no texture. Just materials (tyres models).
I bought Moi and that was a revolution in my workflow because Polytrans can't export n-gons but again never tried to unwarp a model.
Did you try to export your model int quad and triangle instead of n-gon?

Planar, cubic, spheric maping wroked good with my models.

David Solito wrote:

Cloudman wrote:Anyone use Polytrans? Seems to be the answer to my issues.

http://www.okino.com/conv/imp_granite.htm

I bought Polytrans to convert Solidworks files into object...
I never tried to unwarp a model converted with Polytrans.
I had many trouble with the vertex map of my model when loaded into modo for the rendring.
Of course, here no texture. Just materials (tyres models).
I bought Moi and that was a revolution in my workflow because Polytrans can't export n-gons but again never tried to unwarp a model.
Did you try to export your model int quad and triangle instead of n-gon?

Planar, cubic, spheric maping wroked good with my models.

I have Moi and for the most part this has been great. I have never been able to get N-Gons to work with Maxwell.....always lots of the mesh missing/reversed. How have you got this working?? I normally use quads/triangles.

Moi is a great alternative for preparing nurbsdata into usable polymodels. But 3D-Coat can also read both STL and PLY files which you should be able to export from your CAD applications. Then you can autoretopologize them and unwrap UV's in 3DC and then paint textures, export the whole thing out to Maxwell and finish it up there.
For the handy people there is even a small SDK released which allows you to connect 3DC to external applications, this would perhaps be good to hook up Maxwell Studio with 3DC to further smooth the workflow between applications.

/ Magnus