I'm trying to pick up Ecotect, but am hitting a major road block before I can even start using the actual program. I've checked all the other threads for advice, but nothing seems to solve the problem I'm having.
I built a Rhino model specifically for Ecotect, with nice, simple forms which are all completely closed polysurfaces. The aim is to do some solar studies. I export from Rhino in a .dxf format, with a custom scheme for Ecotect in which I "Write Surfaces as: Meshes" and "Write Meshes as: Meshes". The trouble is, when I import my model into Ecotect, my beautiful, wholesome polysurfaces get exploded into thousands of individual triangular portions of mesh. I've even tried the "Merge coincident triangles" in Ecotect, but all that does is at best turn what was a 6-sided closed polysurface into 6 individual surfaces.
I've followed, verbatim, a tutorial I found here: http://www.gsd.harvard.edu/research/gsdsquare/Publications/Rhino%20to%20Ecotect%20.pdf
but I'm not getting the results I expect.
Just to be sure, I've even opened back up that same dxf in a new session of Rhino, and there, my polysurfaces are preserved as nice, complete, closed meshes. This leads me to believe that the issue is certainly somwhere on the part of the import process in Ecotect. Perhaps i'm missing out on a checkbox, or some obscure option in a load screen, in which case I'd like to know what and where.
If anyone has any advice, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks very much.