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Exporting from formZ to Rhino


rickbern

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Thought I'd post this since I went through a bunch of permutations and we have a brand new forum...

 

To export from formZ 7.x to Rhino 5.x with holes in solids, I found iges with the trimmed surfaces options to give me the cleanest import into rhino.

 

I choose the export by layer option, which gives me a separate file to import for each layer.

 

Hope I save someone out there a little time in the future!

 

Rick

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Hi Rick,

 

I found in my own tests of FormZ's IO capabilities that STEP was the best option for exporting from FormZ to Rhino. You have a lot of flexibility with how the export handles grouping too.

 

As long as the model you start with in FormZ doesn't contain any faceted elements you get a perfect parametric representation in Rhino for further manipulation. And because Rhino doesn't contain any normal based smoothing errors when exporting tesselated models to OBJ/3DS/DAE etc, it makes for a great translation utility for getting error free FormZ geometry into 3ds Max, Maya, Modo, C4D etc.

 

For anybody on OS X, Rhino is still free to use as part of it's open beta program and likely to remain that way for many months to come. It's also more stable than many commercial products on the market so there's no substantial risk/added stress in using a beta product.

 

http://www.rhino3d.com/mac

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Hi Gentlemen,

 

Yes, IGES is something of a dinosaur format and has a number of different specifications, so may not always give the "perfect" translation, but it does work "reasonably well."  In general, we would recommend trying other formats first, as they are generally more reliable.  STEP would also be our first choice, but DWG with the option: Facetted Objects as ACIS objects would likely be the second best option if you ever encounter an issue with STEP...

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