Best drawing-techique for AutoCAD -> 3ds max

[SvantePanter]

Today we draw in AutoCAD using lose hanging, not-closed-lines for basically everything. This makes it easy to use tools like Offset, Trim, Extend, Fillet and so on. Seems like drawing with lines is the most flexible way to draw in AutoCAD.

But! When you take the .DWG into 3ds max, you have to draw rectangles or similar (closed splines), to be able to extrude and build walls and likely. So you have to work through the whole drawing and draw everything once again.

This is the way we work today at my office. Does anyone have a "better" workflow when working between AutoCAD and 3ds max?

I guess switching to Revit would be the best advice, but non of us is ready for that yet.

[Neilg]

I was under the impression most people used autocad as a base and re-did the splines using that to snap to.
I dont find it takes long at all when youre working to a view and your lines snap straight onto the points you need, and much prefer it because it means I know every step of the model (i'm a 'making everything from scratch' purist)

[tct70]

I was under the impression most people used autocad as a base and re-did the splines using that to snap to.
I dont find it takes long at all when youre working to a view and your lines snap straight onto the points you need, and much prefer it because it means I know every step of the model (i'm a 'making everything from scratch' purist)

Second that.

[provise]

Iv'e used to work with Splines in Autocad (Now with solids,diffent job different method).

When you use splines you can extrude it (the solid modeling way) but you can also give it a thickness in the Properties rollout. if you import this into max use filetype: Legacy autocad then tick cap closed entities in the import autocad dwg popup. max wil see it now as an spline with an extrude on it, wich makes it easy to modify and if you draw for example a square and make an offset from it and you keep them both in the same layer whit the same thickness,max will subtract the inner one from the the outside square.

I use to make all my models like that in autocad only the more organic shape i did in max.

I hope it some help