A potential client wants to create physical models of some stuff I did, but they can only take IGES files. From what I can tell, IGES is a NURBS and solids only format and you cannot export a model in that format unless there are only NURBS objects in the scene.
My models are editable polys with Turbosmooth applied and they are organic and kinda complicated. Does anyone know a way to make this work?
Thanks.
Nurbs can contain meshes. But they have to be “unusual nurbs”.
If ur client want to print ur model - it must fit tolerances for printing.
That doesn’t help. I want to know if there is a way to send my complex mesh to them in IGES format.
IGES can also contain polygonal data. That still doesnt mean it’s printable (Use STL check to get an idea…to make things watertight etc)
Regards,
Thorsten
When I try to export my file to .IGS from Max it ends up creating a .XLO file instead, and that doesn’t seem to contain any data at all. The IGES exporter will only export files with a .IGS extension if they are NURBS-only.
Save your mesh out as an obj, load it up into rhino then export from there.
I downloaded the Rhino evaluation and it gave me the message that IGES does not support polygon meshes. 
So I guess I’m screwed unless it turns out that the client can import some kind of polygon format that they didn’t tell me about.
as you have figured out you have to turn your mesh into a nurb. you can do this in MAX. there is a script called spline cagify that is free to download. then you can put a surface modifier on the spline and convert it to a nurb. The problem with this method is you will have to have built your mesh as if you were building a game mesh (very few vertices) and using turbosmooth as a reference to what your splines will look like. you can also rebuild your mesh if you turn it into a poly and then selectively use the “create shape” at key areas. turning your mesh into a patch and then into a nurb doesn’t work very well at all so I don’t recommend it. there is also software out there that will turn a mesh into a igs file but you won’t get a smooth surface from it. Poor Persons Outline for Working in 3D is a place you can download software that can turn a stl file into an IGS.
Hope that helps
Wooops, sorry for that bad advice! Maybe you could ‘trace’ over your model in rhino and then export?
Ask the vendor if they can print an STL file,
most 3d printers can handle STL.
Oh, also if you are using rhino. there is a plugin called T-splines which takes subd meshes and turns them into nurbs. I haven’t tryed it yet but it looks good. there is a free evaluation of the product.