Geometry conversion issue from Acad 2013 to Showcase 2014

[deehawk]

I have a problem with a "double round" feature on a model. In other terms, it's a revolved piece of circle.

I have redrawn it many times and tried a lot of different conversion options, yet this figure seems to conflict with Showcase (2014).

I start with this: (Acad 2013)

And this is what I get when opening it in Showcase 2014:

Note that the straight piece maintains size, while the corners inflate like balloons.

I've found that saving the DWG-file as an IGES or FBX from within AutoCAD, I can get these corners right. HOWEVER, these 2 formats mess up a LOT of other stuff on my model, and is not preferred.

(IGES multiplies my filesize from 27Mb to 840Mb, and messes with vertices)

(FBX messes with roundness of everything round and makes it polygonal)

I've added the original DWG from above examples as reference.

[MarionLandry]

HI,

I did a little investigation. I am NOT an AutoCAD user and don't fully understand how object are created in AutoCAD. But I can tell that this particular object is giving hard time to Showcase as you know. How did you create it? Are you using any plug in? I don't know if it's possible to transform this object into another type of entities?

I can see the object in AutoCAD clearly. (AutoCAD.png)

Then when I imported in Showcase, the base object is there but not the result. SO Showcase is seing someting but not recognizing the 3d object some how. 

So I imported the dwg to 3ds Max Design to see if I would get any warning.. and I did: Max-import warning.png

Are you using any custom objects that are not recognized by Showcase? It opened fine in Max but Showcase does not support object enablers. So that would be the main reason.

Read my next post as for now I can upload anymore images on this one. 

[MarionLandry]

So from 3ds Max Design, I send the model over to Showcase and it imported very nicely.

Sometimes, we just need to find a work around... We all have challenges and there are not one universal way to do things.. we just have to find way around challenges all the time.. 

So two option: rebuilt your object in AutoCAD in a different way or transform it to a different type of object

or

Use another sofware to resolve the issue such as 3ds Max Design.

I have also used the export from AutoCAD to FBX and worked like a charm.. I am not sure what you mean by "loosing other things"

AUTOCAD-FBX-Import.png

This is my conclusion for now. I will investigate more to give you a clearer answer. 

Marion

[MarionLandry · Accepted solution]

HI, 

I look at this challenge with my team and I got more insight! 

We find that that for making such fluid pieces, such as the bumper you have created, its always best to use surface modeling. This is why Autodesk Alias is such a powerful car modeler because it’s surface modeling tool sets are absolutely insane !!!

In this cases,  surface modeling should be used in AutoCAD instead of solid modeling.

So here is what we did.

We started off with the skeleton of the desired geometry and used the loft command to create the surfaces. This is very quick and easy to do! 

Refer to the image attach. 

Hope this brings more clarity.

Marion

[deehawk]

Hi Marion

As you've probably found out by now, the solid is a clean solid made from 3 lines and an arc, within AutoCAD. No plugins or special features were used.

The model I've worked with in this thread, is merely an example to demonstrate a minor issue within a big model I have.

I can see you have taken the same approach, trying to use whatever tools in reach, as I did, and coming up short defeating the conversion issue.

FBX was for me the best solution. The thing I "lost" in this method, was the roundness of objects. They are not round anymore if you import from FBX. And that looks horrible in my final render. See the example I attached. (It's your image, with red circles marking the errors)

I've tried your latest method though, by making individual surfaces in AutoCAD, and importing them into Showcase.

This seem to work very well! There's only a minor issue with this approach. The surface in question, now gets divided in 2, so reflections get split. See attachment. It doesn't seem to matter what conversion detail setting you use. I even have a custom with higher settings than "1LOD-High".

As said before, this model is only an example of a minor feature on a huge furnace for an industrial boiler, which I do not have permission to upload.

But for the sake of my issue, you don't have to look any further into this, as I will Photoshop other minor errors from the final render anyway.

Thanks a lot for all your effort, I would never have found out about the surfaces on my own.

Best Regards

Dennis Høegh

Graphics & Draughtsman

Aalborg Energie Technik a/s

Denmark

[MarionLandry]

Maybe the weird reflection is due to reversed normals in SHowcase?

http://youtu.be/eIrRIR4U4HI