Poly to Nurbs... is it possible?

[seininja]

Hey guys. I currently model everything in 3dmax. I started learnin max for fun, and because it seemed most approachable. I've recently taken up a job doing ID for engineers. It seems like pro engineer does not like poly surfaces. Is there anyway i can convert it into nurbs format? Right now all the surfaces that enter the program are Faceted.

There is a certain program within Pro/Engineer called ISDX that was recommened by the engineers. Does anyone have experience with that? But yea, the engineer is having a REALLY hard time trying to match my models. When i exported nurbes file from max, it worked totally fine. But i was not taught Nurbs.

If there is no solution. I believe i will have to start learning Alias/Rhino.... Please help if possible. Thanks a lot guys.

[suurland]

Polys and NURBS is two different worlds, so if you want to be an engineer you should probably start learning NURBS.

/Thomas

[3dform]

there exits different technics to get Polys to Nurbs, but to be honest none works fine. Max, Rhino3d and Maya have all some kind of functions to do that. I found out that PowerBoolean does a good job on that too. But, If you have a detailed modell with lot of smoothing, you have no chance.

robert

[Biohazard]

There's nothing straight forward, especially for complex surfaces.
Anyways, you may slice your mesh regulary and then create splines frome these slices to get shapes then use then to create your base nurbs model...

Another way is to snap in 3d space to your poly surface when creating your spline nurbs and recreate your object (at least the overall shape)...

2 cents, I know.

[roppin]

If you have a realy detailed model you can convert it to surfaces in rhino whith a plugin they called smurf when it was rhino v2.0 now I think it is implemented in v3. not sure though. I´m quite sure they have some tools to work whith pointclouds and it shouldn´t be a problem convert the vertexpoints to simple points. there are allso some realy expensive software that do the same, like Geomagic

/Daniel

[seininja]

I have absolute no experience in nurbs tho. But thanks for the input guys. Really needed it. hopefully this will save us a lot of time. I will ask if Rhino function works well enough to learn.

sorry for my inexperience, i've only began 3d design/modeling for a year. I took couple rigerous classes locally but i lack much in experience. I've already spent 3-4k taking max classes and i just don't know if i should throw it all away. Plus, i don't think my employers would be very happy. I wish to find the best way to convert the max to nurb format. Thanks for the help guys.

Should've gone Maya Lol