CAD Export from Max

[jhiler]

Currently we use the Illustrate! plug-in to occassionally export a flat CAD drawing from a section cut or elevation in helping with developing our construction documents. Currently Illustrate! is not 64-bit (and I think they've stated won't be for the foreseeable future) and we are turning our render farm into full 64 bit (keeping 10 nodes at 32 bit). Obviously we can load Max 32 and Max 64 onto our blades and somewhat alleviate this problem, but does anyone know of any other pulg-ins that will allow a CAD export of a section or elevation that is on the 64 bit platform?

-thanks

[dbuchhofer]

You can export Illustrator files to import into cad via splines, for rendered image output to vector though i think the only other one i *know* of is FinalToon

[siliconbauhaus]

Are you after a 2d hiddne line image?

You can export it from acad directly. I wont go into detials unless thats what you want to do

[jhiler]

Basically we have a camera set up to cut a section or be an elevation. We have been able to export the linework cut by the section or shown in the elevation as a CAD file.

It is 3d geometry that is getting exported as linework using the Illustrate! plug-in. I could use mental ray contour rendering to export an EPS file if need be. I think our issue with taking the model into AutoCAD is that some of our models are large in size and exporting to AutoCAD is something we don't want to do if at all possible.

This is mostly for some of our stadium work so the models can be fairly large and complex and we aren't sure if exporting to AutoCAD from Max is something that would be accurate and not be all to time consuming. Basically we model our form in Max and then the architects have to be able to draft it in CAD and we use these exports to help them get the correct shapes and forms. The DWG does not need to be hidden line, though I'm sure it would be more helpful if it was.