pole - do you model in cad or max?

[apexmotion]

We also do all modelling in Rhino and import BREP's with PowerTranslators. Works great!
And the latest version fixed the layer name problem. So no complaints.

[flipside]

Flipside:

I also model everything in rhino and import with powertranslator. I never convert to poly, why would you do that?

because designers/clients always changes their mind 2 minutes before the presentation, so you can't go back each time in an other program, (either rinho or Acad) re-do, re-import-, re-texture or unwrap.. Convert it to poly is a must, a least with the clients I do have. (I started a while ago by building everything in other apps and importing, guess I learned it the hard way...)

How do you alter the converted model if design is changed then? You can't change a fillet or something, in fact, you can't change anything on the converted model.

[Frances]

Frances,

Do you keep your stuff as Brep or you convert it to poly

(I have a project to do where I need to do some changes, but a big part of it was modeled by somebody else. We do own a license of n-power translator, but we can seem to get a nice seemless result when importing)

Thks!

Sometimes I convert to polys. It adds unneeded static meshing to the scene though. Breps have a level of detail that can be set to view dependent.

[elektrosport]

I model everything in max and have done so always (except for the time when I modelled in 3d studio release 4)..
I just learned 2D ACAD, carreer-wise I may have to learn 3D ACAD soon aswell, but I'm guessing that I'll stick to max for modelling.

When it comes to FormZ, which is also mandatory at our school, I used to say that the only reason for keeping FormZ alive was the unfold-function, however this was before I learnt unfolding the Max way..

K.

[DanielBrew]

Interesting thread.

I've been using Max to model in since R2.5 but recently we've bought 6 seats of ADT2006 so I've changed my workflow radically. Which actually hasn't been as painful as I feared. You can throw up a building in about a quarter of the time in ADT than you in a modelling application like Max and it can be far more detailed. The disadvantage is you need to spend months building libraries of walls, doors, windows etc.

Dan

[tricky]

Yeah Tricky, what gives? Even back when I was doing CNC part drawings for millwork engineering, our tolerance was more than one 1/1000th of an inch... are you anal or what, buddy?

If I trace supplied elevations that aren't based on absolute integers, performing solidedits, unions and subtractions can be a nightmare. Its not out of choice thatwe must work to this kind of accuracy, believe me, but it makes it a hell of a lot easier to edit when the client comes back with changes.

DWG linking: we use this occasionally just to 'spin around' the model we are creating and get a feel for how things are looking - this is much easier and quicker to do in Max than in ADT. I see the power of 'the link', but I also like to keep things seperate for clarity: for instance, if a bit of geometry needs changing in Max, or if we have an edit mesh modifier and split imported layers into multiple meshes, the DWG link starts to break down. This has caused major headaches in the past, so we went back to wblocks. We find it to be far more powerful and controllable this way, especially when working in a team.

I'm not sure what Tricky is talking about with 20 decimal places, but I have had problems where something is off by a fraction of a inch and when you union or subtract solids weird errors start to show up as errors, misaligned faces, extra lines, etc.

EXACTLY