From the Ground Up

AIM - Send to 3ds Max Design tips and tricks

 

If you use 'Send to Max' from AIM, your temporary fbx file and .pos (position file) are dropped in this location.

C:\Users\<user login>\AppData\Local\Temp

You may need to retrieve it if you need to export other data from AIM or Civil 3D again and coordinate the data in Max. You will have to use the .fbx export this time to add the user shift in the model as you may not get the same shift applied by the 'Send to Max' option if you select the region to export differently.

Make sure you copy of this data across to your folder where you save the Max file as if that content is deleted your textures disappear in Max as they are being referenced.

 

 

Images in 3ds Max Design not rendering correctly?

If using trees in your scene which have come from AIM, you may need to set some material settings

Press M for the materials and select the dropper and click on a tree to select the correct material

Set the specular level, glossiness and soften to 0

Select ‘M’ button next to opacity and point to the alpha channel of the tree image texture.

(Thanks to Bob Prokopp for pointing me in the right direction)

Jack Strongitharm

It's about time ... and some stuff about SketchUp files

It’s about time …..

 Jack and Jill, sorry, John, have been badgering me (and not in a good way) to get my act together and connect with the ‘blogosphere’. So while they are busy fetching pales of water I shall oblige.

 First up is a little gem of an app for AutoCAD and AutoCAD Civil 3D. Ever sat there day after day like me wondering where you could possibly get free 3D content for your design visualisation project? Things like buildings, cars, boats, dogs, nurses, fruit stalls, football stadiums, weapons of mass destruction?  Well, worry no more. On the Autodesk Exchange for AutoCAD site you can download a free app that will allow you to download any free SketchUp content from the Google 3D Warehouse.

 In this example I will show you how to download, translate and use .skp files in Autodesk Infrastructure Modeller. For those of you who are unaware of AIM, it is a very powerful 3D conceptual design tool and is, in technical terms, very, very cool. Find out more at: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?id=17276659&siteID=123112

 Ok, it’s as simple as I am:

1)      Launch Autodesk Exchange from your AutoCAD Application (top right of the menu bar)

 

2)      Select the AutoCAD store:

 

3)      Select the SketchUp Import tool to download

 

4)      Install the app and follow the instructions as below using either AutoCAD or AutoCAD Civil3D

5)      Once your 3D model has been imported to AutoCAD simply use the AutoCAD export tool to export to an FBX format file

6)      You can now import your FBX file into Autodesk Infrastructure Modeller as a 3D Model! Below are some examples I made of London (England, for those of you in the States) using building and aircraft models from Google 3D Warehouse.

 

7)      And just to prove that you can get almost anything on 3D warehouse (and some people really DO have too much spare time), here’s King Kong attacking the Gherkin. It’s a little known fact that pickled
cucumbers are a staple food of large gorillas!

 Bon Appetite!

Neil Brooker. PhD. (Just kidding)

Autodesk Infrastructure Modeler review in AEC Magazine

 

http://aecmag.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=464&Itemid=32

Jack Strongitharm

Creating outer boundaries for buildings - TIP and TRICK

Been a little while since I posted a cool tip and even this time I have taken someone else’s idea.

This one is from Donal McMoreland of Amicus Technology in Galway, Ireland.

http://www.amicustec.ie

So you may want to build a cool city model using our Infrastructure Modeler application and you have the local mapping dataset, (this one from the OSi in Ireland)

The problem here is that there is no polygons or closed polylines, especially when you have adjoining properties

So the steps are

Create a new layer and make current.

Isolate the building layer

Draw a rectangle around the area

Now using the BHATCH command (use the solid hatch), select a point in the area outside the buildings within your rectangle

Select your solid hatch and then right click and select ‘Generate Boundary’

Now select and delete the solid hatch and you are now left with nice closed polylines around each building.

Final step if you are going into Infrastructure Modeller, it is better to save this layer to a SDF file, so type in MAPEXPORT and save to a file.

 

Now you can connect that SDF file in Infrastructure Modeler and up they pop!

(Note the relistic sky in Galway)

 Jack Strongitharm

 

 

 

Nice tip, thanks Donal !!

 

Jack Strongitharm