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DV304-1L The architectural industry requires 2D drawings to be constructed in very specific ways. For many years, AutoCAD has allowed designers to be creative as well as accurate. To bring these flat drawings into the third dimension, Autodesk 3ds Max contains tools for importing and extruding AutoCAD drawings. Additionally, it allows for material creation as well as accurate interior and exterior lighting. In this session, we'll discuss and demonstrate how to use AutoCAD and 3ds Max together in an expanded toolset.
Drawing Clean-up:
AutoCAD drawings can become quite complex and hard to work with if youre just looking for specific information. Before bringing it into 3DS MAX, it is a good idea to clean up the drawing by copy/pasting just the part of the drawing your interested in, into a new file. Once there, you can erase out and/or redraw any parts you want. 1. Open the file called, A-FP10.dwg. The first step of constructing our model will be to bring in the footprint of the room. Therefore, we must copy/paste the footprint into a new file. 2. Zoom into the classroom. I started using AutoCAD with version 12 for DOS when there were no icons. Throughout this session while using AutoCAD, Ill be giving you the typed commands which you will find are faster (Ill also give you the aliases I have changed them to). 3. Type, layfrz (my alias = fz) which is the layer freeze command. 4. Click to freeze the following: a. b. c. d. e. dimensions notes drafting symbols column grid lines hatches look
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Figure 2 New Layer Icon 12. Type, pl for polyline and, using your object snaps, draw a polyline around the inside of the classroom. For this particular file, we dont need any other lines except for the new footprint. 13. Type, layuniso for layer-un-isolate. a. Make the 0 layer current and freeze the, footprint layer. 14. Type, e for erase and erase all of the objects on the screen. a. Unfreeze the footprint layer.
Figure 4 Audit
Figure 3 Purge 16. To check the drawing for errors, type, audit (au) and hit the spacebar (fig. 4). a. Type, y and hit enter to tell AutoCAD to fix any errors that it finds. Now we need to save the drawing in a new folder which I like to call, Parts. Within this folder, Ive also created a sub-folder called, ACAD. Ill do this because its possible I might create a, part in MAX at some point and Ill want to keep them separated. 17. Type, qsave (q) to save the file and call it, footprint.dwg.
Figure 5 A-EL10.dwg
Figure 7 According to the footprint of the classroom, the objects to the right of the right-most vertical line and to the left of the left-most vertical line are on an angled wall (fig. 7). For this exercise, were only working with the front wall of the classroom. Since this is the case, erase the objects that are on those walls. 10. For precautionary reasons, lets save this file in our, Parts folder and call it, frontWall.dwg. One file-naming convention within the 3D industry is to have no spaces in your file names, start the first word with a lowercase letter and each subsequent word with an uppercase letter. Were going to ignore the columns because they tend to be freestanding objects which do not need to be modeled with the wall. Additionally, the lighting fixtures can be modeled separately. 11. Erase all of the light fixtures. Your final elevation should look like the image in figure 8.
Figure 11 - Customize
2. Click, US Standard and then choose, Feet with fractional inches and click, OK (fig. 12). 3. First we need to import our footprint. Click, File and Import (fig. 13). 4. Next to where it says, Files of Type at the bottom of the dialog box, choose, AutoCAD Drawing (*.DWG, *.DXF) (fig. 14 - Be sure not to choose, Legacy AutoCAD. This file type is used for drawings that come from older versions of AutoCAD.) 5. Navigate to the location where you saved the, footprint.dwg file and double-click it.
Figure 15 Options
Under, Derive AutoCAD Primitives By, set it to, Layer, Blocks as Node Hierarchy. Place a check next to weld and set the weld threshold value to 1/8. Switch over to the, Layers tab (fig. 16). Choose the, Select from list option. Click the, None, button and then click, footprint and click, OK.
Click the, Layer Manager icon (fig. 20) and it will open (fig. 21). To make objects easier to select later, re-open the select by Name dialog box and select all of the objects you just imported. Then, click, Select. Click the, Group pulldown menu (fig. 22) and then click, Group. Name it, frontWall (fig. 23). Lets take a look at this in the perspective viewport. Right-click in it to make it current and then push alt+w on your keyboard to maximize it. Well need to rotate the objects twice. I like to use the angle snap but, by default, its set to 5 degrees. Click the angle snap icon (fig. 24) and then right-click it.
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Figure 25 Grid and Snap settings 7. Next to where it says, angle, type 45 (fig. 25). Hit enter and then close the dialog box. 8. Switch to select and rotate by using the keyboard shortcut, E. 9. Rotate -90 degrees around the Z axis (fig. 26) and then -90 degrees around the Y axis. 10. Now lets use object snaps to move the wall into position. Click the, Snaps Toggle (fig. 27) and then right-click the icon. Figure 27 Snaps toggle
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Figure 30
15. Now its time to extrude our objects. With the, frontWall group still selected click the Group pulldown menu. Then click, Open (fig. 31). 16. Click the, Layer:wall object (use the, Select by name, list if necessary). 17. Switch to the, Modify tab (fig. 32). Open the, Modifier list and choose, extrude (fig. 33). 18. The extrusion is going to be backward so the value next to, Amount (fig. 34) has to be negative. Insert a value of, -6.
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Figure 34 Amount
Its usually a good idea to have adjacent objects not be perfectly in line with each other. Small edges can capture light and will give your scenes more definition. 19. Select the object called, Layer:cork and apply an extrude modifier to it. 20. Enter a value of, 1.
Figure 35 frontWallComplete.max
Figure 36 frontWallCompleteAngledWall.max
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We need to eliminate everything from this drawing except for the floors lines (which happen to be steps), column circles and walls. 5. Type, layfrz for layer freeze and click: a. the walls b. the floors c. the columns 6. Use the Erase command to erase all of the remaining objects and then unfreeze the layers you just froze. Were going to use the polyline command to create a closed shape for the first floor step. Well then use the boundary command to create closed shapes for the remaining floor steps and columns. Just as the hatch command requires a closed area, so does the boundary command. 7. Create two new layers: d. 2D-floorSteps --> red e. 2D-columns --> yellow
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Figure 42 Convert to editable poly Youll notice that it turns red indicating that it now has a surface (fig. 43). 3. With the layer:2D-floorSteps object still selected, right click, and, to the top-left, click, polygon (fig. 44). 4. Since the first step is just the floor, theres no need to extrude it at all. Click the second step to select it. 5. On the modify panel, click the settings button next to extrude (fig. 45). When the dialog box appears, enter a value of, 6 and click, Apply (fig. 46).
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6. Select the step behind the one we just extruded and enter a value of 12. Click, Apply. Then, extrude the next step, 18 and the step after that, 24. Click, OK. 7. Return to the top level of the object by right-clicking and then clicking, top level (fig. 47).
Figure 44 Polygon
Figure 46 Extrude Settings Dialog Box Figure 47 Top Level Figure 45 Extrude
Although we did create shapes for the columns, curved objects should always be created from scratch within 3DS MAX because theyre more controlable. 1. Select the column shapes and, holding down, alt on your keyboard, tap, Q to isolate the current selection. A yellow button will appear indicating that youre in isolation mode. 2. Apply an, extrude, modifier and set the amount to 10-1 . The cap of the column is slightly complicated, so well create it once, attach it to the cylinders we just created and then clone that finished column around the room. Since a very specific shape for the column cap has been designed, were going to create half the shape in AutoCAD and then revolve (or lathe) it in MAX.
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1. Return to the drawing called, A-EL10.dwg in AutoCAD and zoom in to one of the tops of a column.
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Open the file called, classroomFinal.max. Within this file youll see the completed classroom model (fig. 57). Figure 57 classroomFinal.max
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