As more than someone show interest in switching from another 3d software to Blender (in particular 3dsmax users) I decided to start a thread to trying to reply to the specific questions.
Please, feel free to ask everything.
I hope to be prepared enough to give you the right answers.
Please, consider that I’m more confident about modelling, lighting, shading, texturing. Not so much on animation.
Ah..I’ve forgot to say that this is opened for every Blender users we have here… so will have more possibilities to give the right replies
I’m glad to help too!
One request of the forum administrators - Can you please *please* fix this sub-forum! For non-administrators, it is not possible to edit any posts. This has been an issue ever since this section was imported from the old vray.cgdo.ru site.
Andy
For anyone who wants to test out a fairly simple arch-viz scene in blender, I’ve posted one here: http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthread.php?89352-interior-render-example-to-share
How good is blender at CAD data import compared to 3ds max?
Would be very important for me.
Hi Bardo,
Jumping over from the Max 2017 thread here so we don’t derail that thread. 
Glad that you are willing to help us fellow Max users. One should have a backup plan if things keep stagnating with Autodesk and 3ds Max.
Here goes my first question. How much harder (if at all) is to do a typical arch-vis interior/exterior job in Blender compared to Max in terms of importing CAD files, modeling, texturing and lighting? Does Blender import DWG/DXF files? What about IGS, SAT, and STP? We are heavily relying on these formats because this is what most of the time our clients send us to work from. Is modeling arch-vis stuff as fluid/intuitive as in Max?
Thanks again for your help and spending time answering these!
In my workflow, I am only importing geometry and I use .obj format usually. It keeps UVs and textures correct. I know others also use .fbx format, though the last time I tried it (importing a turbosquid model) I got an error about the file version and wasn’t able to use fbx.
There is a converter in the “render layers” panel that can generate the shader nodes for Vray to use. Currently, there’s an error converting materials with textures, and the converter is not working in the current version. (I have an older build from March of this year that does have a working converter.)
You can see attached the file formats you can import, plus there are some Vray specific assets you can import. There are add-ons floating around out there in the Blender world that can give you other file format options.
The “append” option allows you to import assets from other blender files (for example you just want to grab a shader from another file - you can browse the blend file and see subfolders of the pieces of the scene file - so you can grab just that one bit.)
Here is a full list of the available import/ export add-ons currently supported for Blender:
https://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts#Import-Export
In the user preferences, you can enable these in the “add-ons” panel
I also use “FreeCAD” to do some file conversions (for example from STP to STL format.)
Ah, but I didn’t address any of the meat of the question…
I don’t think it’s any harder. The Vray part of it is very transferrable, all the familiar bits and pieces are there. I have a workflow with OBJ import that works great for me for getting assets into Blender. The Blender side of things, well… it takes some adjustments. I’d say I was learning Blender for about half a year on and off until I felt comfortable with the interface. I still model everything in Sketchup since it’s geared so much better for arch-viz (inferencing being the biggest draw) But once I have the base geometry, I find Blender is much better for UV editing (better than Max imo). Plus, the main reason I switched to Blender was for the animation tools, which are really top-notch.
The big difference with lighting, as mentioned elsewhere, is that RT feedback is not currently implemented, so no real-time adjustment of lighting.
Hope that gets at your question a bit.
About AutoCAD import you have to consider that Blender import natively only DXF.
So you have to use a converter or software to open DWG and save in DXF… or if you own an AutoCAD license save as DXF.
In my daily job, also when I use 3dsmax, I use AutoCAD LT just to open the colleagues’ drawings and clean up it from the useless data.
Then…when I use 3dsmax I save in DWG, for Blender in DXF.
I work only with 2D drawings.
Thanks for the reply. I was hoping to learn if I can do all modeling in Blender the same way I do all my arch stuff modeling in Max. I don’t use Sketchup. Does Blender perform as well for modeling architectural stuff as Max does?
it depends how you are used to model in 3dsmax.
In general, one big difference is that Blender doesn’t have Edit Poly/Mesh/Patch modifier.
Blender has modifiers and it works in the same way (stacking modelling).
If you could be more precise in your modelling approach I think t’ll be more easier to make comparison.
Take in consideration that there several addons for specific modelling (for windows, roof, walls).
Does Blender have something similar to max’s link files? We mostly work with dwg’s and then just need to update the link in max. Similar to xrefs.
No, in my knowledge… not… and Blender doesn’t read natively DWG file format.
You have to use DXF and you have to import it everytime you make changes..or at least the changed portion of the drawing.
Thnx, shame. That is a great feature in max imo. Saves so much time with design revisions.
Someone in the 3dsmax scetion fo the forum asked about the layer system.
Blender has layers but limited to 20.
Obviously for the most of archviz jobs you’ll need more of them. The workaround is to use groups and Outliner (with the “group” visibility option ON) as layer manager where you can choose which Group/Layer can be selectable, renderable and visibile in the viewport.
And groups have a different use from 3dsmax. In my experience they are only the equivalent of 3dsmax layer.
You can link other blend files into your main blend file. It may feasible to work out a 2 step system where you keep a linked blend file with the 2D data. Import the updated dxf into that linked file.
99% of the time i just use standard poly modeling with modifiers on top (Shell, Symmetry, FFD etc) and of course splines with Sweep modifier for cornices, baseboards etc.
Yes, I know that in Blender you can’t stack edit poly/edit spline modifiers to make iterations of the model so you have to be a bit wary about your modeling but you still have modifier as in Max which is very nice and you can always save your models at different stages of the process so you can go back a few steps if you mess things up. Am I right?
I don’t use any addons for walls, and windows at all. I just model the walls with splines/polygons and for the windows, roof, doors etc. I’ve got a library of ready-made objects and I just place them in the scene. So I guess I’ll be fine with the same approach in Blender?
Also, I know that Blender has integrated sculpting tools. Are they any good for modeling organic stuff like sofas, chairs, beds etc?
As far as I know, Blender 3.0 will have proper layering system with unlimited layers and layer nesting. Have I heard right?
Ok…I’ve thinked about the same solution but it needed a manual re-import in the “2D” blend file.
I haven’t used the xref link for DWG but what dean_dmoo says is an automatic method…and I think that in 3dsmax you can have it.
About Xref for 3d models or any other objects in scene (included lights, materials, animations, ecc) you can use the “Link” option in the file menu and it works more or less like 3dsmax.
