Splines gone mad after extrusion

[MBetke]

I have a large DWG plan file with around 9 levels I need to visualize. I cleaned from the usual junk like texts and not needed elements but got very bad extrusion results. Missing faces, inverted face...a whole mess.

 

Is there any magic trick I can do to normalize the faces except the "normal" modifier (I use 3dsmax) and the little "Unify Flip Normal" script which is around?

 

Seems very time consuming to redo the whole floorplans from scratch with new splines/meshes by hand.

[Boris Horosavin]

This happened to me on several occasions, when I was trying to import dwg files or mesh objects of unknown origin. I got this inverted or overlapping faces, I suppose that is what happeend to you. Maybe you could try welding nearest vertices (keeping small threshold) or chaging backface settings but I doubt it will do the trick. If there is a universal solution for this and you stumble upon it please share it with me.

[Scott Dombrowski]

Whenever I have problems with an extruded spline not looking correct, it's almost always because the spline itself is either not closed or it overlaps itself. If you go into the spline subobject mode of your spline shape and select one of your splines, it will tell you if it's closed or not. Even if it's closed, it will still have extrusion errors if it overlaps itself.

 

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[Boris Horosavin]

Ah, yes, one other thing, though I suppose you know this already. When importing objects from dwg file it is smart to first move them to the center of the coordinate system in AutoCAD (0,0,0 on the xyz scale, that is). Sometimes if the objs and splines are too far off in the CAD coordinate system they tend to get totally distorted when imported in Max. But I'm don't think this is the problem you got there...

[MBetke]

Thanks its exactly what you guys also seem to get. I end up now with redoing all splines manually because the mess is just to big and unpredictable. On a lucky note some elements from one level are the same on the lever higher with different fassade elements. So its not that bad but still a lot of monkey-work....

 

I wonder why those small things dont work these days. Autodesk releases tons of "interop" functionality and their marketing is cooking about but getting a clean drawing where I only need to hide some unneeded stuff would be king and save me really the big work sometimes.

[id_ivan]

Try to use "overkill" command to simplify entities within AutoCAD (overlapping creates double/flipped faces apart from unclosed polyline). Also, there is an old LSP called "flatten" around the net which zeroing entities according to Z plan.. Flatten is available in maxscript as well. For checking spline inside max, use "Shape Check" from utilities panel.

 

cheers

[Bruce Hart]

There is a shape check tool in the utility panel that can help point out overlapping spline areas. I tend to do a vertex weld with a small tolerance to fix up the shape. If this fails turn on on "show vertex number" on the edit spline panel. Then look for overlapping vertex numbers that will stand out as a black blob and fuse and weld. Observe the order of the numbers and where they start and end.

 

These procedures fix up most problems for me