how to build 3d-geometry effencietly?

[max montana]

this is an image of my last project. the geometry doesn`t look too complicated, but it took me a lot of time to build the 3d-model. i struggled with the fact that all 3 houses are rotated to each other.
would it be usefull to make a coordinate system for each house?
can you tell me about your ways to build 3d-geometry like this efficiently in max?

[pixelplume]

I'm not sure if i understand you. Do you mean the houses gradually rotate around a center point? You could group them and use working pivot (in the hierarchy panel).

[pixela]

I am not sure if I understand either. Why didn't you model only one house and cloned it and rotated afterwards?

[beestee]

It looks like each house is different.

Perhaps this would have been a good opportunity to utilize containers or xrefs. Keep each building in it's own file, on the default coordinate system for the file, then just put the reference in place for the final scene. Modifications for each bulding and the site can then be easily distinguished.

[oligophant]

i agree with beestee, xref for big projects its a life saver, to move around and place the xref models create a dummy and bind it (see max help for further info). For modeling in max i just work with spline+extrude+uvw map ( world coodinates), or spline+bevel+uvw map when i need some detail around the edges, spline+bevel profile for frame windows, etc, i always avoid polymodeling because its not suited for fast changes; and for last i use layers in max, it helps a lot for complicated models

hope this help you

[max montana]

thanks for your substantive replies.
indeed each house is different.
@beestee: i know xrefs but not containers. could you explain in a view words what they are for?
took a deeper look at xrefs and had good results by making an xref object of each house.

my actual workflow in buildíng 3d-models for achitecture is to make polygons of all kinds of objects out of the elevations of the plans.
then i import these polys(each on another layer) into max, extrude them to their final height, position and rotate them correctly.
this works fine for most of the geometry my clients are designing, but when it comes to more complex geometry this i not a good way to do a 3d-model.

i know archicad a little and think that building the 3d-model in a cad programm with all the drawing opportunities a cad program has, could be a way to do this fine.
more and more i also get infos that modelling in sketchup should work fine, but i have no experiences with sketchup.
whats your oppinion about this?