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Chris Dordoni

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Posts posted by Chris Dordoni

    3D EXPORTING PROBLEMS PLEASE HELP ME!!

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Adam,

    While I don't use C4D, I have had good results in other rendering applications by saving as IGS or STL. If C4D cannot import these formats, try going through another CAD application to translate the IGS or STL to a format C4D can read.

    The IGS (or IGES) format will export your nurbs surfaces and can then be tesselated (meshed) in another application with better results than in VW. The STL export presents a slider to control the number of polys exported.

    Chris

    Outputting HP-Gl/2 from Mac to a plotter

    in Troubleshooting

    Posted

    Hi Jon,

    Have you considered using VirtualPC and a windows plotter driver? Looks like Winplot6.7 might work if you can use a usb cable to connect to the cutter.

    Winplot 6.7

    http://www.summa.be/pages/soft.html

    FlexiSign will drive most vinyl cutters, and runs in OSX. I guess it depends on how desperate you are or how much $$$ you can spend on the problem.

    http://www.scanvecamiable.com/products/flexi_overview.asp

    Unfortunately I can't give you a direct printing method from VW, as both options above require you to export a file.

    Good Luck,

    Chris

    [ 06-06-2005, 07:19 PM: Message edited by: Chris Dordoni ]

    dxf for gerber translation

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Ken,

    I would guess that there are splines or bezier curves in your file. Most CADCAM programs cannot use spline curves. I would guess that your friend converted the spline curves to arcs in Autocad before he saved the file. Unless I have missed something, there is no quick method to convert spline curves to arcs in Vectorworks.

    Chris

    Nurbs

    in Solids Modeling

    Posted

    Heath

    If you can have the person save two IGS files, one with trimmed and the other with untrimmed nurbs, you may have better luck figuring out where the problem is.

    Chris

    Import QuickDraw 3dmf format files

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Mike,

    Apple's 3D format is pretty much dead, although some of the applications that have been around for many years do have translators for 3DMF. FormZ and Carrara are two that I know of, and I suspect that Amapi might also. There is a free time limited trial (you can import and save files) of the latest versions of Carrara and Amapi at http://www.eovia.com. An older version 5.15 of Amapi is also available for free at http://www.amapi.net.

    From Carrara, the compatible export format for VW would be DXF. FormZ will export in DXF, DWG, IGS and SAT. Only VW 11 will import SAT in addition to DXF and IGS importers in earlier versions of VW. I suspect Amapi will save in DXF, IGS and SAT as well.

    Regards,

    Chris

    EPS import

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi Ritchie,

    If you have a later version of Illustrator that can save as DWG, you will get an editable vector file in when imported into VW. However, there is a difference between Illustrator bezier curves and VW spline curves, so you'll have to check your curves in VW to make sure they don't noticeably distort.

    If you find curve distortion to be a problem, you can get a plugin for Illustrator to save a DXF file with arcs. I am using EXDXF-Pro, which costs about $90, and works great with VW.

    Regards,

    Chris

    Polygons to NURBS conversion?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Hi,

    Tools for nearly automatic polygon to nurbs conversion like Geomagic or RapidForm are fairly expensive, in the $10,000 plus range. Most low cost solutions involve sectioning the model and drawing nurbs curves to loft or skin together. There is a plugin for Rhino called Smurf that semi automates this process. FormZ has a Re-engineering plugin to process point cloud data into a nurbs model.

    Chris

    3D object file size

    in Solids Modeling

    Posted

    Hi Azizg,

    If you have done a lot of solid modeling operations, you can use "convert to generic solid" to reduce the object's file size.

    You will lose the "history" of operations that were performed on an object, so it is a good idea to save a copy of your object BEFORE you convert to generic solid.

    Hope this helps,

    Chris

    complex shape construction

    in Solids Modeling

    Posted

    You could try one of the photo modeling applications. I know there's at least one (ImageModeler) available for the Mac. You would have to stick reference targets or dots to the object to define the curves, prior to taking the pictures.

    You could get a general shape this way. I would not recommend this method if you needed more detail because it is very time consuming for a lot of points.

    Chris

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