Newbie request for workflow suggestion.

[andyH]

Hi everyone, I am very new to 3d, and I have just completed a max course.

 

I am building up to do an arch-viz project for a friend (and also to add to my portfolio) of a small residential development (2 story house). I received the cad files from the architect this morning, and I have had a look at them using a free dwg viewer. The files include 2d floor plans, elevations and a site plan. Looks like everything I need to get started.

 

My question is this. I dont have autocad, just 3ds Max 2010. So I want to get started by simply modeling the house. I was hoping that someone may be able to give me a hint about how best to create the 3d geometry in max when starting out with two .dwg files, one is site plan, the other contains floor plan and elevations. I know that the .dwg imports into max, but its just one big flat 2d thing in my viewport.

 

So whats the best approach to workflow to break this thing up and make it a useable accurate reference in Max, or do I need to consider some intermediate product to do the job?

 

Many thanks in advance.

[dogragurjeet]

hey andrew,

First of all it is important to know how the drawing has been made...... is it in layers or in one layer only etc etc. The layers could also be locked or frozen. you can check this out when u import the file into max. Check out all the import options. judgin by what you have written the drawing was made using one single layer so it comes in as one 2d object. You can snap to the endpoints, midpoints etc by turning on the snap inside max. Some screen captures of ur import settings and on screen display in max can facilitate better understanding of ur problems.

Best of luck till then

[andyH]

Many thanks for the reply. You are correct the elevations and floorplans are all in one drawing (dwg file) and one layer. The site plan is a seperate drawing and is also on one layer.

 

Attached is my max screenshot with the floorplan.dwg imported using defaults.

 

EDIT: Actually the imported drawing has multiple layers inside max. Theres even one with just the walls in it. I imagine that will help some...

Edited June 10, 2009 by andyH

[dogragurjeet]

that looks good. Now you can use the layer manager inside max to turn on or off selective layers. I would suggest making a copy of the drawing inside max and mark one copy original and leave it unaltered. Start drawing on the other copy with snaps option on in max. I usually make my 3ds in cad and import it so cant help u much with drafting inside max, but i heard it is more versatile than cad in this field.

You can switch on wall layer only and draw lines over it then use extrude modifier, then switch on only door window layer, draw the same and then boolean it from wall so and so forth....

Well best of luck with that and tell me how it shapes up.

[FreakiestFish]

Hi Andy, I am in the same situation as you are, please update this thread regularly. I am currently looking into the compatibility between 3dMax 2010 and Autocad 2010.

 

Still try to work out what is the best work flow as in whether to

A. model the objects in CAD and export to 3dMax.

B. model the objects from scratch in 3dMax all together.

 

For those who has been in visualization industry, feel free to add more advice. Thanks

[andyH]

I havent had much time to really get my hands dirty yet. But from my brief play I can see a couple of things that may need work.

 

The dwg file contains floorpland AND elevations, and it seems to import the entire thing as a single spline object. So I think the first job will be to break the imported reference up into the basic bits I need to build the model, ie the walls. The layers that initialy looked so comprehensive are mostly empty, so most of the bits and peices are spread over only a couple of layers, but enough to at least let me isolate the walls, which is a big help. It seems that the dwg file comes into max with a bunch of pre-set layers, that or the cad artist defined layers that she never bothered using.

 

What I will end up with in phase one I think will be just a 2d spline of the floor plans for ground and first floor, I will just group and detach those splines, a simple extrude will give me a quick basic structure. I will need to modify the walls to blank in the window and door gaps or the extrude will leave great big floor to ceiling holes, and I want more control by using a boolean to cut the windows and doors. Thats how I see stage one anyway. That will give me two basic models, upstairs and dowstairs walls. From there I plan on puting in the floor and the middle slab (no idea what architects call it) stack and align the two floors together and then cut a hole for the stairs and model them, then poly model the roof using the elevations as reference.

 

That would give me a basic windowless structure. I am sure it wont be as easy as I imagine, but I will give it a go. Then I can use one model for the external scene and one for internal. I would think using the same scene for both external and internal renders would be a bit too heavy for my system.

 

At the risk of revealing my total lack of experience I will endeavour to post regular updates of the project if anyone is interested.

 

I was thinking that it may be worth using another product in my small pipeline like sketchup instead of max for the basic structure, I dont know if it would be any easier, comments from those more experienced than I would be appreciated.

[dogragurjeet]

hmm that is a tricky question cad over max. I am an architect and i prefer cad over max for modelling. This is purely because of the reason that I am used to cad than max (did all 2d drawings on it!!). Max has certain advantages over cad when it comes to solids which have different crossections and translate in all 3dimesions. for example a spiral staircase railing etc. For archi visualization cad is i guess ok, A> because the architect's drawings are in cad format , B> rarely encounter anything organic or the above case that i mentioned.

Furnitures , cars etc can then be added on in max.

FreakiestFish > max and autocad have good compatibility as they are from the same company autodesk. max9 works gr8 with autocad 06-07......

keep on cracking

[dogragurjeet]

andy > sketchup for me is very cool but has issues when exporting meshes...... i would suggest to stick with cad or max..... the workflow u suggested is quite ok.... just that u need some experience with it. There are usually some repitions as to door and windows go.... so model them seprately. It will take some time in the beggining but then it will be fine

[Tommy L]

 

Still try to work out what is the best work flow as in whether to

A. model the objects in CAD and export to 3dMax.

B. model the objects from scratch in 3dMax all together.

 

 

This question is relative to the user.

 

Alot of people who's tool was Acad before they tried Max start modeling in Acad and become very efficient (it is a great modeling tool for most buildings, but sometimes awkward for organic forms). Many people keep the Acad-to-Max workflow, even after becoming skilled Max users, although the majority of these users will model organic forms in Max.

 

Max is designed to be able to model EVERYTHING, as a result, it is a more complicated tool to learn. However, it does simplify some areas of workflow by keeping everything in one program.

 

 

My experience was to learn both at the same time. I started in a studio where modeling was done in Acad, rendering in Viz. Therefore, I learnt this workflow. However, I now model everything in Max, I just use Acad for cleaning up drawings before importing into Max.

 

 

You are starting from scratch in both programs for 3d? I would recommend learning everything in Max. It just seems that this will give you a better foundation for problem solving later on, you will have to learn the 'organic modeling' part anyway....

Another thing to consider is that Acad as a program may have its days numbered, if you listen to the rumor mill...

 

Good luck, you have made a good start by finding this forum.

Tom.

[dogragurjeet]

seriously????? Acad has it's days numbered.... that scares me.. cant imagine life without it . I mean it's a great 2d tool atleast if not 3d for architects, mech engg and so on. God save us !!!!!

[andyH]

Thanks for all the replies and feedback. I have had another quick look at lunchtime, and I can see that the first challenge will be to get the one big spline that is imported into max trimmed down to something useable. I just have to extract the spline edges I need that make up the walls and then use them to extrude the walls. So far I noticed that in order to be able to seperate the various elements (and delete the ton of unwanted stuff) I have to colaps the spline to an editable poly, delete everything I dont need and then export the poly. From there I can bring the poly back into a fresh max scene and start the editing and extrusion.

 

Also, not sure why but I had to run an extrude modifier against the spline before it would allow me to colapse it to a poly. Without the extrude when I tried to colapse it, it just disappeard!, all layers were visible, so no idea what that was about.

 

End result will be the outer and inner walls extruded to the correct height (in my case 9'). I have decided to leave the window and door gaps in, rather than conduct a booleanextraction (they always leave those ugly random lines shooting off from the cuts anyway). I will just insert geometry into those gaps to give them the correct shape.

 

Sorry if this is total newbie drivel to the more exerienced amongst you, I wont drawl on too much, but airing my proposed method here to you old sweats may prevent me from doing something daft. So dont be shy, if I am going about this all wrong, please feel free to flame and trash.. constructively of course ...

 

NB, I had a look at Sketchup, and I could do without jumping into learning another application whilst I am still learning max, so Sketchup wont be used during this project, unless someone persuades me otherwise. Although if I could use Acad, I could do basic rework of the drawings to get a clean dwg file ready for max, but its likely to be faster for me to do it in max as I would need to learn Acad first.

 

Thanks again to those offering advice or comments.

[FreakiestFish]

Thanks Tommy.

 

I am Maya/Max user. Trying to learn CAD and get into visualization but the tutorials out there are not as comprehensive as other software like Max and Maya.

 

I have another question for you,

When you said you model EVERYTHING in Max these days, what references do you use? Do you import the 2d drawing from CAD to give you accurate dimension and scales?

 

Cheers

[Tommy L]

Thanks Tommy.

 

I am Maya/Max user. Trying to learn CAD and get into visualization but the tutorials out there are not as comprehensive as other software like Max and Maya.

 

I have another question for you,

When you said you model EVERYTHING in Max these days, what references do you use? Do you import the 2d drawing from CAD to give you accurate dimension and scales?

 

Cheers

 

I will clean up the drawing in acad (delete any hatch / text, relayer to my liking and ensure the drawing has a sensible origin point etc) then use the file link in max to bring in the plans/elevations etc. Then its max all the way.

That said, I work with finished designs. If I worked in an architectural practice, my workflow would be different. Assuming the architects work in 2d, I would maybe model in Acad and use the file link to update in max. They are two very different scenarios.

[FreakiestFish]

I will clean up the drawing in acad (delete any hatch / text, relayer to my liking and ensure the drawing has a sensible origin point etc) then use the file link in max to bring in the plans/elevations etc. Then its max all the way.

That said, I work with finished designs. If I worked in an architectural practice, my workflow would be different. Assuming the architects work in 2d, I would maybe model in Acad and use the file link to update in max. They are two very different scenarios.

 

 

Thanks Tommy. Your answer save me alot of time messing around. !!!

[andyH]

Well I can confirm from a novice perspective that the modelling in Max is easy enough. I ended up building the ground and upper floors using the splines directly from the 2d .dwg import. The scale was all good and to be honest the walls went up quickly.

 

I did have to spend a bit of time fliping normals as about half of the faces from the extrusion were reversed, and then a bit of vertex shuffling and welding and capping to get the geometry properly lined up. The window and door gaps were easily filled with primitves snaped and scaled and aligned to the new walls.

 

From there I dropped a 1' thick slab on the floor for the ground level walls, another 1' thick slab on top of that, then aligned and dropped the upper floor walls onto that.

 

Used a boolean to hack out the hole in the middle slab for the stairs, nice simple straight up and down standard max stairs, then a big primitive on top for the roof structure.

 

Finally filled the holes with the basic window and door templates that comes with Max.

 

The whole thing took me a couple of hours, so a pro would likely do that in half the time.

 

I must say it was easier than I had anticipated, and because the whole thing was seeded with the .dwg file I am confident in the scale of everything. Also the model at this stage can easily be used as a foundation for both exterior and interior detail work. Perhaps even both for seamless animation fly-by and fly-through??

 

I have asked the customer (a good friend) for the list of proposed appliances and fittings etc so I can source/model those. I dont see the point in making stuff up as the end result is supposed to be photo-realistic (or as close as I can get) renders of the house they intend to be built.

 

One thing I am not sure about, and I ask for comment from more experienced max users. Should I keep one scene for both exterior and interior renders/animations? Can I use layers to hide the stuff that is not needed for the render/animation and maintain viewport performance and sensible render times? Or is it generaly done to have seperate scenes?