Apologies for a question which may be a bit vague, but i am asking for a friend. We need to find a reliable way to convert Alias Wire files to 3D Stusio Max files. IGES does not seem to support this conversion. Any suggestions or pointers would be appreciated. From what i understand the fundemental maths of the two systems is different hence why this is not so easy.

Hi -

I have been converting alias wire files to IGES and taking them to MAX from a considerable time now and have not experienced any major problems so far. Following are some of the points you can consider -

1. Delete construction history of your models.

2. As far as possible, do not use multiple trimmed surfaces.

3. Try stiching your surfaces.

4. Delete all unwanted geometry, curves, lights and null nodes, you can keep specific files only for data transfer.

5. One of the ways can be convert your models into poly & then export as DXF as well.

IGES with 5.3 works best for me all the time from Alias.

Hope this helps. Good luck !

Thank you for your answer, and what you say is correct, but also the problem. After digging deeper into this the problem is that the models we are converting cannot be stiched because they consist of many many components that are just surfaces of no thickness. Complete vehicle and interior (alias) visualisation models for instance.

To stitch thses models would take perhaps tens of man hours, since they consist of upwards 30000 unsolid surfaces so we are looking for a quick and dirty way of converting these.

once again many thanks

You may also export all surfs from Alias in IGES format, and import directly in 3DS using the PowerNurbs plugin.

This plugin allows much lighter manipulation of nurbs than native 3DS import options. You can modify tesselation, flip normals and so on much much faster.

Noel.