[Radiance-general] Radiance plug-in for 3DS

[Jeffrey McGrew]

Iain Macdonald wrote:

> Jeffrey,
>
> I also get the same behaviour as John reports.  In my experience going 
> from dxf -> 3ds -> mgf -> rad (works better than dxf -> rad directly) 
> missing surfaces are due to errors in the original cad model or small 
> errors in curved surfaces being triangulated.  I would recommend 
> checking the original model.

Well, I know that the model is complete. Revit makes very complete, well 
detailed, and tight models. And I made the model I'm trying to use as an 
example, there aren't curvy bits in it, and when it's brought into 3D 
Studio it's complete, and it's normals are all ok, ect. ect. So I think 
the model is complete when I start, it's that stuff is getting lost out 
of 3D Studio upon export. But now that I know how 3ds2mgf behaves, I'm 
going to focus on getting my models out of 3D Studio intact first, see 
if that's the issue. If 3D Studio isn't exporting whole models that 
originated within Revit, that's a large issue that will mess up any 
format I try to use to get to Radiance.

> Apart from that could there be any 3ds primitives that are not 
> translated by 3ds2mgf?

When you export out a 3D model from Revit, you can export as solids or a polyface mesh. The second option is better, and is what I'm using. Those meshes wind up as meshes in 3D Studio, I don't know what they wind up as in a 3DS file.

Jeffrey McGrew

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