Import from .fbx or .3ds with smooth edges

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone,

a while ago I created a 3D model of a ship. Primarily I use Blender for the editing, but I also have access to 3dsmax. Obviously the Blender model only contents vertices, edges and faces, that you can make look smooth in Blender although they never really are. After transfering the model into AutoCAD using the .3ds format, the edges are all straight lines from vertex to vertex. The entire mesh is treated as a grid.

Now I would like to create some technical drawings from the shape without having to entirely rebuild the ship in AutoCAD. Therefor some of the edges/surfaces need to be smoothly curved. Every edge should still cross all its vertices, but many of them as a spline instead of a straight line. I need a smooth mesh, that I can create 2D lines (in sectional view) and their measurement from.

Does anyone of you have an idea, how to archieve this? I did a lot of research already for this and tried plenty of different workflows, but none of them brought me even close to what I need. Maybe the solution is concealed in a different software, but at the moment my hopes are on AutoCAD.

Thanks a lot in advance for every hint that you can give me!

Nathalie

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> Obviously the Blender model only contents vertices,

>> edges and faces, that you can make look smooth

When you use a triangulation model then the rendered object might look smooth, but the geometry itself (looking to it in wireframe mode), the edges of the triangles are also straight lines in blender ... in the same way as you see in AutoCAD.

If you need to transfer curves then you need to have the base model itself as a curved surface or solid model. At the moment the model is faceted you can't expect this to be curved in any other software.

In case your blender model is nurbs based then you might try to use a different filetype for export (like SAT, IGES, STEP which support curved surfaces/solids).

- alfred -

[Anonymous]

Hello Alfred,

First of all: Thanks for the incredibly quick reply!

I am aware of the fact, that my ship is faceted and not smooth at all (even if it might look smooth in Blender). I already tried to transfer bezier curves, but only as .fbx and .3ds. So far nothing appears to be visible after the import in AutoCAD. I will try to install an add-on for Blender to export the curves as SAT, IGES or STEP. But I don't think, that I can create a solid object from the splines in Blender (maybe in AutoCAD though?).

Is there no way to edit the edges of the "grid object" like they were polylines in AutoCAD?

Thanks again

Nathalie

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi,

>> Is there no way to edit the edges of the "grid object"

>> like they were polylines in AutoCAD?

You might try to convert to smoothed meshes and from them to surfaces.

But if that works or not depends on what you get as geometry imported into AutoCAD, I don't know that as I can't see your file.

You might look to command _MESHOPTIONS and _CONVTOSURFACE, but that is just guessing.

- alfred -