Inventor to Maya

# 1 06-12-2012 , 05:00 PM

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Does anyone know what the best way is to import assemblies from inventor into maya whilst retaining both colour and structure hierarchy?

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# 2 06-12-2012 , 05:23 PM

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Does it have fbx export functionality?

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

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# 3 06-12-2012 , 05:26 PM

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No, I don't think so.

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# 4 06-12-2012 , 05:28 PM

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If using maya 2011 or above you can use DirectConnect to import inventor data .ipt or .iam files directly into maya. With DirectConnect you can move data between a good number of CAD packages. It does have some limitations but from my experience it has worked well enough to get me 90 plus percent of the way there.

I am currently using Maya 2013 and use Inventor regularly. Data is of course imported as NURB's. There are limitations. For a good overview read this - https://images.autodesk.com/adsk/file...usersguide.pdf

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 06-12-2012 at 05:30 PM.

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# 5 06-12-2012 , 05:51 PM

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I tried importing directly using the iam, but it didn't appear properly with the surfaces. At the moment I am just trying to use IGES files, which preserves the structure, but doesn't preserve the colours, and then adding the colours later.

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# 6 06-12-2012 , 05:54 PM

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Unfortunately those are your two best options using DirectConnect and .iam or .iges.

With .iam you should get everything including materials. IGES is geometry only so you are not going to get materials.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 7 06-12-2012 , 06:30 PM

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hmmm It's been a while and I installed SP1.1 for inventor and SP2 for maya 2013. As a test I imported the sample engine MkII iam and although all the materials imported they did not seem to be applied. The model came in fine though. I am fiddling with it now to see if there is setting or something that has changed.

But all the surfaces (or most) should come in. There are limitations that are explained in the user guide link above.

Depending on how complex the model is if you go iam you'd get the materials you'd just have to reapply them.

Below are images of what gets imported and you can see the materials are all there but you can also see that there is an error applying all of them.

I applied a default lambert so you can see the surfaces are there. Looking at the logs I see a couple surfaces had problems though but for a model of this complexity 99% of the model is there and that's pretty good.

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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 8 06-12-2012 , 06:40 PM

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I tried importing directly using the iam, but it didn't appear properly with the surfaces. At the moment I am just trying to use IGES files, which preserves the structure, but doesn't preserve the colours, and then adding the colours later.

Originally Posted by leonb2273

By "it didn't appear properly with the surfaces" do you mean like the image above where there are no materials applied or there are surfaces missing?

Because I think rather then going iges and then having to recreate all the materials it might be easier to go iam and then just manually apply the materials that are already created.

The .iam will have all the structure. In fact it may have too much but you can cull out the unnecessary bits.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 9 06-12-2012 , 07:01 PM

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By the way this is the kind of stuff you can do in NURB's boys and girls! Good luck trying to create some of these unified compound surfaces using poly modeling. user added image

I have come to the conclusion that trying to build complex compound shapes using poly modeling is like trying to build the space shuttle from a pile of rocks!

Of course I have also concluded trying to use Maya's NURBs tool set it like trying to perform delicate brain surgery using a hammer and a chisel! user added image

And this is at default render tessellation.

With the mental ray approximation editor I could eliminate the tiny bit of faceting that is visible. The same issue that is affecting the application of the materials however, does seem to be affecting my ability to apply a NURBs tessellation approximation to the surfaces.

I'll have to do some more research to determine the cause and find a solution.

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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 06-12-2012 at 07:22 PM.

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# 10 11-12-2012 , 04:22 PM

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Thanks for your responses, I've tried importing as iam and iges, but when I save the mb file, I get massive file sizes (100MB+) and maya runs really slowly, even before I have done anything. Any advice?

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# 11 11-12-2012 , 04:38 PM

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Absolutely. You are going to get a ton of useless data in the transfer. Maya transfers everything even if it does not know what to do with it.

To be sure to clean out any hidden or orphaned nodes select all the nurbs surfaces only and then export the selection to a new file. This should clean out all the garbage nodes and leave you with a file that just contains the nurbs geo.

I think that will leave you all you need. Generally when I transfer stuff the nurbs surfaces are all I really want.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

Last edited by ctbram; 11-12-2012 at 04:42 PM.

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# 12 11-12-2012 , 04:41 PM

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I've tried selecting everything i want and then 'export selection', but the file size remains more or less unchanged

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# 13 11-12-2012 , 04:43 PM

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You you sure you are getting JUST the nurbs surfaces? How complex is the model?

I posted the first message to soon selecting just the nurbs geo and exporting is what you want to do. But you must be sure you have no history or other nodes. All you want is the nurbs surfaces.

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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# 14 11-12-2012 , 04:45 PM

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The iam is about 200KB and it references about 30MB worth of ipt's

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# 15 11-12-2012 , 04:53 PM

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yes but the ipt's are going to contain construction history and tons of stuff that will be transfered to maya.

What I you need to do is transfer all the stuff to maya then strip out just the nurbs surfaces. If the resulting file is still large then it has to be as a result of lots of surfaces.

How large is the mb file after exporting just the nurbs geo?

"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants." Sir Isaac Newton, 1675

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