I was wondering if anyone knows any way to convert a set of points created in autocad and exported in a .dxf file, into a mesh (triangulate them) in 3d studio max so i can create a model of my terrain. 3d studio is able to import .dxf files, the problem is that the file only contains points, not triangles.
Thanx a lot
A set of points ? Are they polylines, splines, or what ?
Try Create>Compound>Terrain.
No, they are points, they are shown as AcdbPoints in Deep Exploration( i dont have autocad myself)…
So, what points are they ? Points that build contour line, or vertices of the already triangulated terrain (but without faces) ?
What happen if you select them all and (right click) convert to editable mesh ?
How did they generated ?
Well i am not sure, i didn’t create the data, they were given to me as part of a project and they represent real terrain elevations measured by some government department. Sorry i cant be more precise, i am very new to this area. I tried what you said but 3d studio seems to crash (maybe the points are too many- 16590 when i select all) so i tried with a very small number of points but still nothing happens, no polygons are generated. I have also tried convert to editable poly and convert to NURBS with no effect.
I could give you the .dxf file if you think you can figure something out of it.
Thanx
So it’s done via satelite. Usually, the usable result is in the form of contour lines, each line represents elevation level. The height range can be 1, 5, or larger, depends on the presented scale. Examine those points, can you see if they are separated into noticable elevation levels ? If so, you can try to connect adjacent points to build the contour line, per level.
Another fact is if I don’t combine the lines, Max can’t build the terrain. I don’t know how to combine geometries into 1, so I did it at import time, there is an option for it.
Thanx a lot, but due to the fact that my knowledge of 3d studio is close to zero, i have gone with the much more complicated solution of triangulating the points myself. I found some code for delaunay triangulation, read the .dxf after i had formated it to isolate x,y,z points and saved the resulting triangles into a .obj file which is a really simple format. I imported the .obj into 3d studio, i cant say that i am pleased with the results(i guess there are some bugs in the code), but the variation of the elevations is very small anyway…
Sidenote: Panda3D can load .dxf natively.
Example:
b = loader.loadModel("yourmodel.dxf")… that ought to work.