Newbie Questions

[MatthiasGinster]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a mechanical Engineer, partially working with Inventor (I'm firm with it!) - as my company bought the new 2015 Versions, these have 3ds max with it.

Since I'm doing (beside of lots of other stuff, usually I'm the head of the project dept.) our website and media - what I'm missing are some eye-candy animations.

This leads me to 3ds max.

Now my questions:

1. I'd like to produce animations from Inventor files, mostly assemblies. Unfortunately If I import an assembly, all parts are "free" from each other - so I guess all the relationships coming from inventor (constraints) are not working here - correct?

2. If so, can I import them? How does this work?

3. If not, how can I convert parts of the assembly to single pieces?

(For e.g., a machine has a housing and a rotor, the housing is made from single parts as well as the rotor, all together it is a main assebly, divided into single assemblies, divided into single parts.) When I now click on any single part of the assembly, I can move it as I is just a single pice of whatever.

But instead I'd like to animate (for e.g.) the rotor, rotating in the housing.

How can I do that? (The multiple parts to single piece conversion)

4. I know a little animation stuff from inventor - so the timeline is known to me etc - (right now) no help required - for sure later 😉

To give you an impression of what I'm talking, I have attached some Inventor renderings from the machine, the housing and the rotor (there are even more parts as only housing and rotor, but to get the idea how to do my work this is at the moment sufficient)

Thank you in adnvance & regards, 

Matthias

[MatthiasGinster]

No one knows this (I guess) simple thing?

I'd really appreciate an answer - so I could start working with 3ds Max.

Regards,

Matthias

[Steve_Curley · Accepted solution]

I don't work with Inventor so I can't address points 1 and 2.

There are 2 main ways of attaching things.
1) Convert the primary object to Editable Poly (in the case of the Rotor I'd suggest the spindle (because the spindle spinning is what drives the rest of it). Attach (on the Edit Geometry rollout) the other (spinning) parts to it.
2) Select and Link the other parts to the spindle - they will follow the motion of the spindle. This method is more flexible but retains the number of discreet objects in the scene, and Max is happier with a few large objects than many small ones.
There is a third way - Groups - but I'd advise against them as they can have unintended side effects, especially when animating.

Make absolutely certain that the imported objects are coming in at the right size. This will depend on how Inventor saves the objects and the System Units you have in Max when you import. I would suggest you create some simple objects (like boxes) in Inventor of known, different sizes, then import them to Max. You may have to alter the System Units (NOT just the display units!) to ensure that they come in correctly. Failure to get this right, from the start, will surely come back and bite you later.

[Paul.post]

I'm having the same problems with importing from inventor.

I had alot of errors with importing now that is all out of the way the file structure totally screwed.

I really hope there is someone that knows how to make this alot easyer!

(I'll keep trying so when I got something I'll come back to this)

[Paul.post]

Well this fix won't help you with the constrains you made in inventor but it does keep your file structure intac!

From inventor > Export to Showcase > export to FBX > Import FBX in 3dsmax

Hope this is just a dump fix and there will be something better but atleast its something!