import to Radiance

[Hu_Jia]

Hello all:

Thanks to many suggestions and help from this group, I tried some approaches of
importing files to Radiance. I hope to share my experiences and also want to
know if anyone knows how to solve the questions bellow. First of all, sorry
for such a long email.

To import models to Radiance, there are three basic ways (obj, dxf and
ecotect) (There are others, but I just know the following three):

*(1) **The following uses obj2rad:*

       (a) Convert to *.obj* file by other tools,

   (b) Then use *obj2rad* to convert the *obj* file to .*rad* file;

   (c) Define materials in another .mat file (material names could be found
in the objfile.data by using command: obj2rad -n objfile > objfile.data)

*(**2**)** The following uses dxf2ad*

    (a) In revit, export .dxf file (save as *autocad 2000* rather than
current version),

(b) Then use *dxf2rad* to convert the .dxf file to .rad

But I found all the geometries get the same materials.

So, does anyone know how to handle this problem?

*(3) The following uses Ecotect *

(a) Export .dxf file from Revit (I can not import dwg by Ecotect, is that
normal?)

(b) In the diag, define different zones *by item name;*

(c) Export the model into .rad file directly, including .mat file

The problem is that .mat file seems not correct. One material is assigned to
one zone. For example, in the Door object, there are two types of materials,
but they are combined into one material after importing to Ecotect.

So does anyone know how to deal with the materials problems?

For the above methods (1) and (2), the key is to get .obj and .dxf file. To
get .obj file, there are 4 ways;

*(1) In revit, use FBX converter to get obj file*

(a) In revit, export fbx file;

(b) Download FBX converter at URL:

Autodesk | 3D Design, Engineering & Entertainment Software

(c) Convert fbx to .obj

The problem is that I always get some zero value of “vn” in obj file. Even
if I use “–f” option or delete “vt” “vn”, it still does not work because the
“face” in obj file uses “v/vt/vn” format. If I delete them, errors appear
because obj2rad can not find “vt” and “vn”. Could anyone know how to solve
this problem?

*(2) Use 3D max to get obj file*

   (a) In revit, export fbx file;

   (b) Import fbx file to 3ds max

   (c) Make some changes in 3ds max to get export obj file.

I have not tried this way, but I think this way is better because I can
re-assign or change materials in 3ds max easily and can get the correct
material names. Is this right?

*(3) Using 3ds max to get obj file*

   (a) In revit, export dwg file;

   (b) Import dwg file to 3ds max;

   (c) Assign materials in 3ds max

  You can see it at http://www.becausewecan.org/node/190 Should I assign
materials again in 3ds max? I have not tried this way, but it seems good
as (2).

*(4) using sketchup pro to get obj file. *

···

**

As always, thank you all.

Jia

[Thomas_Bleicher3]

(2) The following uses dxf2ad

\(a\) In revit, export \.dxf file \(save as autocad 2000 rather than current

         version),

    (b) Then use dxf2rad to convert the .dxf file to .rad

But I found all the geometries get the same materials.

So, does anyone know how to handle this problem?

The dxf2rad man page says:

"Output primitives will have modifiers based on the layer of each
entity in the form "l_<layer>"."

Basically you have to make sure your DXF has the elements split on
layers based on their material. If Revit uses another convention you
will have to export export elements with different materials
separately.

(3) The following uses Ecotect

(a) Export .dxf file from Revit (I can not import dwg by Ecotect, is that
normal?)

(b) In the diag, define different zones by item name;

(c) Export the model into .rad file directly, including .mat file

The problem is that .mat file seems not correct. One material is assigned to
one zone. For example, in the Door object, there are two types of materials,
but they are combined into one material after importing to Ecotect.

So does anyone know how to deal with the materials problems?

DXF can only hold information about linetype and linecolor but not
advanced properties like 'material'. Ecotect otoh uses a very
sophisticated material definition to account for all the thermal,
acoustic and reflective properties. In your step (b) above you assign
materials to the layers ("item name") and split them out into zones.
If your door has two materials on the same layer you loose that
information. You can still assign a different material to individual
polygons in one zone, though.

We usually import geometry as 3DS or obj, assign materials in Ecotect
and export to Radiance. Typically we only have 4 or 5 materials so the
problem of defining different materials for a door does not arise.
When we model the geometry in Ecotect we don't even include doors ...

The problem is that I always get some zero value of “vn” in obj file. Even
if I use “–f” option or delete “vt” “vn”, it still does not work because the
“face” in obj file uses “v/vt/vn” format. If I delete them, errors appear
because obj2rad can not find “vt” and “vn”. Could anyone know how to solve
this problem?

Zeros for vt should not cause problems; it's a perfectly acceptable
value for a texture coordinate. The normal vector should always be
normalized to 1 so (0,0,0) doesn't work. Perhaps you can find a 3D
modeler/converter that can recalculate the normals and produces better
quality *.obj files.

You should be able to replace all normals with a (fake) 0,0,1 value.
If you use the -f option obj2rad should ignore the actual value.

Regards,
Thomas

···

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 3:03 AM, Jia Hu <[email protected]> wrote:

[Christopher_Rush]

If you have access to Rhino you could use that also to open a DWG file and export to OBJ. If the DWG is separated by layers you can assign each layer a material name in Rhino, which will be carried into your OBJ export and kept successfully via obj2rad. Occasionally I’ve seen bad DWG export that when opened in Rhino moves some surfaces out of place.

This process usually creates good OBJ/RAD files. The Rhino OBJ export also allows you to select the polygon size/count you require depending on how complex your geometry is.

-Chris

···

____________________________________________________________
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systems are scanned for acceptability of content and viruses

[Jack_de_Valpine]

Hi Jia,

Here are a few additional pointers on obj from revit.

NORMALS
For whatever reason it seems that fbx converted to obj using the FBX converter can for some normals report:

    vn 0 0 0

which make obj2rad unhappy.

So the best thing that I have found is generally to take the convert fbx->obj file and process it through something like Rhino, Polytrans, NuGraf, or Blender (other suggestions out there...). Which have functionality to recalculate normals and otherwise process meshes/polygons.

MATERIALS
First off as I believe some others have pointed. Material information from other programs is useless! They do not report valid reflectance information. The only thing that you should hope to get is that the geometry is organized by material name.

A stock conversion from fbx->obj will for what ever reason organize geometry by object name! This is despite the fact that there is a valid usemtl statement in the obj file. This can be ok however it does mean that you probably need to have some kind of parser to do some material mapping in a useful way (there can be hundreds of object names). I did this in perl early on in my experience processing Revit models into something useable by Radiance. However, this all can be better managed by processing the fbx->obj file through Rhino, Polytrans, NuGraf or Blender where you can process the file and send out an obj with normals and material groupings that make you and Radiance happy.

Best,

-Jack

···

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Jia Hu wrote:

Hello all:

Thanks to many suggestions and help from this group, I tried some approaches of importing files to Radiance. I hope to share my experiences and also want to know if anyone knows how to solve the questions bellow. First of all, sorry for such a long email.

To import models to Radiance, there are three basic ways (obj, dxf and ecotect) (There are others, but I just know the following three):

*(1) **The following uses obj2rad:*

       (a) Convert to *.obj* file by other tools,

   (b) Then use *obj2rad* to convert the *obj* file to .*rad* file;

   (c) Define materials in another .mat file (material names could be found in the objfile.data by using command: obj2rad -n objfile > objfile.data)

*(**2**)** The following uses dxf2ad*

    (a) In revit, export .dxf file (save as *autocad 2000* rather than current version),

(b) Then use *dxf2rad* to convert the .dxf file to .rad

But I found all the geometries get the same materials.

So, does anyone know how to handle this problem?

*(3) The following uses Ecotect *

(a) Export .dxf file from Revit (I can not import dwg by Ecotect, is that normal?)

(b) In the diag, define different zones *by item name;*

(c) Export the model into .rad file directly, including .mat file

The problem is that .mat file seems not correct. One material is assigned to one zone. For example, in the Door object, there are two types of materials, but they are combined into one material after importing to Ecotect.

So does anyone know how to deal with the materials problems?

For the above methods (1) and (2), the key is to get .obj and .dxf file. To get .obj file, there are 4 ways;

*(1) In revit, use FBX converter to get obj file*

(a) In revit, export fbx file;

(b) Download FBX converter at URL: http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855 <http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/item?siteID=123112&id=10775855>

(c) Convert fbx to .obj

The problem is that I always get some zero value of “vn” in obj file. Even if I use “–f” option or delete “vt” “vn”, it still does not work because the “face” in obj file uses “v/vt/vn” format. If I delete them, errors appear because obj2rad can not find “vt” and “vn”. Could anyone know how to solve this problem?

*(2) Use 3D max to get obj file*

   (a) In revit, export fbx file;

   (b) Import fbx file to 3ds max

   (c) Make some changes in 3ds max to get export obj file.

I have not tried this way, but I think this way is better because I can re-assign or change materials in 3ds max easily and can get the correct material names. Is this right?

*(3) Using 3ds max to get obj file*

   (a) In revit, export dwg file;

   (b) Import dwg file to 3ds max;

   (c) Assign materials in 3ds max

  You can see it at http://www.becausewecan.org/node/190 Should I assign materials again in 3ds max? I have not tried this way, but it seems good as (2).

*(4) using sketchup pro to get obj file. *

**

As always, thank you all.

Jia

------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general

[Hu_Jia]

Thank you for your suggestions, I am going to use Rhino to see how it works.

[Jack_de_Valpine]

Hi Jia,

I think that in Rhino the thing to use is the "repair mesh" tool. And then when you "save as" you should select the check box to export material names.

-Jack

···

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Jia Hu wrote:

Thank you for your suggestions, I am going to use Rhino to see how it works.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_______________________________________________
Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general

[Hu_Jia]

Hello:

I download the evaluation version of Rhino V 4.0 SR 8 (about 120 M, the
latest evaluation version with full funcations) from its official
website. It has a limitation of 25 times of saving files.

I can import dwg (2007) from revit 2010 and export obj by Layer.Another way
I tried was to import fbx which was exported from Revit 2010. I intend to
export obj file through "export material definition". But the command line
of Rhino says Error importing XXX.fbx.

I asked this question in Autodesk Discussion Group and they say "FBX from
Revit 2010 is only compatible with Max 2010. It doesn't work like
earlier versions of FBX where other programs could open it." So the problem
is that current Revit uses a new version of fbx while Rhino seems to use an
old one.

Regards,
Jia

[Lars_Grobe]

Hi Jia!

I asked this question in Autodesk Discussion Group and they say "FBX from
Revit 2010 is only compatible with Max 2010. It doesn't work like
earlier versions of FBX where other programs could open it." So the problem
is that current Revit uses a new version of fbx while Rhino seems to use an
old one.
  

Sounds familiar to anyone who has been using Autodesk-products before. Once you save your data in one of their formats, it is basically gone - formats are changing with every release and are hardly documented anywhere.

Still as another hint, there are two attempts to get access to at least some data in dwg files. One is still in development:

http://www.gnu.org/software/libredwg/

They have not published their recent updates to the code, but aim at some rather ambitious parsing library for dwg.

The other attempt is support for 3d-dxf in Blender:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.4/Py/Scripts/Import/DXF-3D

The idea here is to ignore dwg (which is changing too often and has terrible documentation if any) and instead rely on dxf. They recommend the use of another external tool to convert from dwg to dxf in case it is required, which works perfectly fine also using wine on Linux.

Still, as a note from my side: if Revit does not support any export out of Autodesk formats at all, and the application is generating models for simulation - may be Revit is just the wrong software for this? There is a lot of great, relieable modeling software out there developed by companies playing fair and not locking users away from their own data... I cannot imagine to spend money on a modeler that does not support any standard format (e.g. step or iges would be a must and would already solve your problems).

Cheers, Lars.

[Christopher_Rush]

Is there any reason not to use the dwg as exported from Revit? In the
rhino layer manager, there is a column for material. If you enter a name
for the material of each layer (no need to specify color here), that
will carry over to the obj export if you check the box to export with
material definitions.

If fbx was able to work would this maintain material names assigned in
Revit?

···

____________________________________________________________
Electronic mail messages entering and leaving Arup business
systems are scanned for acceptability of content and viruses

[Jack_de_Valpine]

Hi Jia and Lars,

A few thoughts here.

FBX
I think that if you are going to use fbx in your workflow from Revit, unless you are using Max, you will need to use the FBX Converter, to process the fbx to some other format, such as obj. Note though that the FBX Converter does enable you to process fbx to older versions of the fbx format. Perhaps with some experimentation you can determine which of these might work with Rhino's fbx import capability.

DWG
The problem that I have noticed with dwg exported from Revit is that the layer organization is vastly simplified, so that while the geometry will all be there, it may not be broken out by layer the way you want and trying to reorganize the geometry in Autocad is probably impractical. FBX on the other hand does maintain correct material associations with the type of work flow that I have outlined previously. NOTE however that for some simulation purposes a model in dwg format and layering may be perfectly sufficient!

REVIT
I think it is pretty obvious that Autodesk would like to achieve some level of vendor lock-in across their product family (I think that for the most part they have been successful in this regard looking at their acquisitions and product offerings). Thus, all the pains (over the many years) that we have had to deal with in trying to get usable geometry out of applications such as Autocad and now Revit. I agree that there are other good solutions for modeling that are probably more open in terms of their import/export formats and other functionality. However, my observation is that more and more architectural design firms are moving towards Revit which I have to say actually produces models that are reliable and reasonably well organized, to the extent that I feel that we can actually make use of client produced models. I think that it make a lot of sense to figure out how to leverage this model data from Revit for simulation purposes, to do otherwise is impractical and missing how the architectural design process/industry is evolving.

Regards,

-Jack de Valpine

···

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Lars O. Grobe wrote:

Hi Jia!

I asked this question in Autodesk Discussion Group and they say "FBX from
Revit 2010 is only compatible with Max 2010. It doesn't work like
earlier versions of FBX where other programs could open it." So the problem
is that current Revit uses a new version of fbx while Rhino seems to use an
old one.
  

Sounds familiar to anyone who has been using Autodesk-products before. Once you save your data in one of their formats, it is basically gone - formats are changing with every release and are hardly documented anywhere.

Still as another hint, there are two attempts to get access to at least some data in dwg files. One is still in development:

http://www.gnu.org/software/libredwg/

They have not published their recent updates to the code, but aim at some rather ambitious parsing library for dwg.

The other attempt is support for 3d-dxf in Blender:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.4/Py/Scripts/Import/DXF-3D

The idea here is to ignore dwg (which is changing too often and has terrible documentation if any) and instead rely on dxf. They recommend the use of another external tool to convert from dwg to dxf in case it is required, which works perfectly fine also using wine on Linux.

Still, as a note from my side: if Revit does not support any export out of Autodesk formats at all, and the application is generating models for simulation - may be Revit is just the wrong software for this? There is a lot of great, relieable modeling software out there developed by companies playing fair and not locking users away from their own data... I cannot imagine to spend money on a modeler that does not support any standard format (e.g. step or iges would be a must and would already solve your problems).

Cheers, Lars.

_______________________________________________
Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general

[Hu_Jia]

Hello:

Thanks for your advice. I almost forgot FBX Converter because I used it to
convert the FBX to OBJ and always get "vn" 0 0 0. I try that again, and
find if I convert FBX to 3DS and then import 3DS to Rhino, it works at my
first glance! and also contains correct material names though in one layer.

Revit could directly export DXF (2007) and DWG (2007) by layers (the
materials seem missing), which can be imported to Rhino to get OBJ.
As Christopher and Jack said, it was required to reorganize layers (e.g, in
revit) before DXF/DWG (is any difference for the two?) is exported. I will
also take a look at other ways Lars said.

The layers for DWG/DXF format in Revit are organized according to its
categories and family types. I tried to customize and reorganized
some layers based on the default layer organization and it may
be acceptable for not complicated geometry.

Thank you all.
Jia

···

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Jack de Valpine <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Jia and Lars,

A few thoughts here.

FBX
I think that if you are going to use fbx in your workflow from Revit,
unless you are using Max, you will need to use the FBX Converter, to process
the fbx to some other format, such as obj. Note though that the FBX
Converter does enable you to process fbx to older versions of the fbx
format. Perhaps with some experimentation you can determine which of these
might work with Rhino's fbx import capability.

DWG
The problem that I have noticed with dwg exported from Revit is that the
layer organization is vastly simplified, so that while the geometry will all
be there, it may not be broken out by layer the way you want and trying to
reorganize the geometry in Autocad is probably impractical. FBX on the other
hand does maintain correct material associations with the type of work flow
that I have outlined previously. NOTE however that for some simulation
purposes a model in dwg format and layering may be perfectly sufficient!

REVIT
I think it is pretty obvious that Autodesk would like to achieve some level
of vendor lock-in across their product family (I think that for the most
part they have been successful in this regard looking at their acquisitions
and product offerings). Thus, all the pains (over the many years) that we
have had to deal with in trying to get usable geometry out of applications
such as Autocad and now Revit. I agree that there are other good solutions
for modeling that are probably more open in terms of their import/export
formats and other functionality. However, my observation is that more and
more architectural design firms are moving towards Revit which I have to say
actually produces models that are reliable and reasonably well organized, to
the extent that I feel that we can actually make use of client produced
models. I think that it make a lot of sense to figure out how to leverage
this model data from Revit for simulation purposes, to do otherwise is
impractical and missing how the architectural design process/industry is
evolving.

Regards,

-Jack de Valpine

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Lars O. Grobe wrote:

Hi Jia!

I asked this question in Autodesk Discussion Group and they say "FBX from
Revit 2010 is only compatible with Max 2010. It doesn't work like
earlier versions of FBX where other programs could open it." So the
problem
is that current Revit uses a new version of fbx while Rhino seems to use
an
old one.

Sounds familiar to anyone who has been using Autodesk-products before.
Once you save your data in one of their formats, it is basically gone -
formats are changing with every release and are hardly documented anywhere.

Still as another hint, there are two attempts to get access to at least
some data in dwg files. One is still in development:

http://www.gnu.org/software/libredwg/

They have not published their recent updates to the code, but aim at some
rather ambitious parsing library for dwg.

The other attempt is support for 3d-dxf in Blender:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.4/Py/Scripts/Import/DXF-3D

The idea here is to ignore dwg (which is changing too often and has
terrible documentation if any) and instead rely on dxf. They recommend the
use of another external tool to convert from dwg to dxf in case it is
required, which works perfectly fine also using wine on Linux.

Still, as a note from my side: if Revit does not support any export out of
Autodesk formats at all, and the application is generating models for
simulation - may be Revit is just the wrong software for this? There is a
lot of great, relieable modeling software out there developed by companies
playing fair and not locking users away from their own data... I cannot
imagine to spend money on a modeler that does not support any standard
format (e.g. step or iges would be a must and would already solve your
problems).

Cheers, Lars.

_______________________________________________
Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general

_______________________________________________
Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general

[Jack_de_Valpine]

Hi Jia

Not sure why you want to go fbx to 3ds with the converter. 3ds is an old format that has limitations to geometry that may impact your model. You should be able to go to obj and then import the obj into Rhino to do what you want (such as fix normals and export a "good" obj). For obj2rad you want the object to have material names assigned.

Layers and materials are distinct methods of organization. If you are working with Autocad and going to Radiance, layers are the principal method of organizing your geometry. If you are working with Revit, materials are the principal method of organizing geometry (unless you want to work on a per object basis).

If I recall correctly, it has been awhile, if you export from revit to dwg, then certain family categories will get compressed onto one representative layer. Depending on what you are doing this may loose critical geometry differentiation that you need to have. And it is a really big pain to try to edit the resulting autocad model to recover such differentiation.

-Jack

···

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Jia Hu wrote:

Hello:
Thanks for your advice. I almost forgot FBX Converter because I used it to convert the FBX to OBJ and always get "vn" 0 0 0. I try that again, and find if I convert FBX to 3DS and then import 3DS to Rhino, it works at my first glance! and also contains correct material names though in one layer.
Revit could directly export DXF (2007) and DWG (2007) by layers (the materials seem missing), which can be imported to Rhino to get OBJ. As Christopher and Jack said, it was required to reorganize layers (e.g, in revit) before DXF/DWG (is any difference for the two?) is exported. I will also take a look at other ways Lars said.
  The layers for DWG/DXF format in Revit are organized according to its categories and family types. I tried to customize and reorganized some layers based on the default layer organization and it may be acceptable for not complicated geometry.
Thank you all.
Jia

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 10:31 AM, Jack de Valpine <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

    Hi Jia and Lars,

    A few thoughts here.

    FBX
    I think that if you are going to use fbx in your workflow from
    Revit, unless you are using Max, you will need to use the FBX
    Converter, to process the fbx to some other format, such as obj.
    Note though that the FBX Converter does enable you to process fbx
    to older versions of the fbx format. Perhaps with some
    experimentation you can determine which of these might work with
    Rhino's fbx import capability.

    DWG
    The problem that I have noticed with dwg exported from Revit is
    that the layer organization is vastly simplified, so that while
    the geometry will all be there, it may not be broken out by layer
    the way you want and trying to reorganize the geometry in Autocad
    is probably impractical. FBX on the other hand does maintain
    correct material associations with the type of work flow that I
    have outlined previously. NOTE however that for some simulation
    purposes a model in dwg format and layering may be perfectly
    sufficient!

    REVIT
    I think it is pretty obvious that Autodesk would like to achieve
    some level of vendor lock-in across their product family (I think
    that for the most part they have been successful in this regard
    looking at their acquisitions and product offerings). Thus, all
    the pains (over the many years) that we have had to deal with in
    trying to get usable geometry out of applications such as Autocad
    and now Revit. I agree that there are other good solutions for
    modeling that are probably more open in terms of their
    import/export formats and other functionality. However, my
    observation is that more and more architectural design firms are
    moving towards Revit which I have to say actually produces models
    that are reliable and reasonably well organized, to the extent
    that I feel that we can actually make use of client produced
    models. I think that it make a lot of sense to figure out how to
    leverage this model data from Revit for simulation purposes, to do
    otherwise is impractical and missing how the architectural design
    process/industry is evolving.

    Regards,

    -Jack de Valpine

    -- # Jack de Valpine
    # president
    #
    # visarc incorporated
    # http://www.visarc.com <http://www.visarc.com/>
    #
    # channeling technology for superior design and construction

    Lars O. Grobe wrote:

        Hi Jia!

            I asked this question in Autodesk Discussion Group and
            they say "FBX from
            Revit 2010 is only compatible with Max 2010. It doesn't
            work like
            earlier versions of FBX where other programs could open
            it." So the problem
            is that current Revit uses a new version of fbx while
            Rhino seems to use an
            old one.
             
        Sounds familiar to anyone who has been using Autodesk-products
        before. Once you save your data in one of their formats, it is
        basically gone - formats are changing with every release and
        are hardly documented anywhere.

        Still as another hint, there are two attempts to get access to
        at least some data in dwg files. One is still in development:

        http://www.gnu.org/software/libredwg/

        They have not published their recent updates to the code, but
        aim at some rather ambitious parsing library for dwg.

        The other attempt is support for 3d-dxf in Blender:

        http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.4/Py/Scripts/Import/DXF-3D

        The idea here is to ignore dwg (which is changing too often
        and has terrible documentation if any) and instead rely on
        dxf. They recommend the use of another external tool to
        convert from dwg to dxf in case it is required, which works
        perfectly fine also using wine on Linux.

        Still, as a note from my side: if Revit does not support any
        export out of Autodesk formats at all, and the application is
        generating models for simulation - may be Revit is just the
        wrong software for this? There is a lot of great, relieable
        modeling software out there developed by companies playing
        fair and not locking users away from their own data... I
        cannot imagine to spend money on a modeler that does not
        support any standard format (e.g. step or iges would be a must
        and would already solve your problems).

        Cheers, Lars.

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[Hu_Jia]

Hello Jack:

You are right, I should convert fbx to obj. I am not very familar with
different types of formats. In revit, some families categories are combined
into one layer. My way is to re-define them by myself and in this case I can
get different layers with different materials.

Thank you,
Jia

[Hu_Jia]

It is a very good way by converting FBX to obj via FBX converter and then
using Rhino to import obj. It contains all material information and can be
used by obj2rad.

Thank you!
Jia

···

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Jia Hu <[email protected]> wrote:

Hello Jack:

You are right, I should convert fbx to obj. I am not very familar with
different types of formats. In revit, some families categories are combined
into one layer. My way is to re-define them by myself and in this case I can
get different layers with different materials.

Thank you,
Jia

[Jack_de_Valpine]

Hi Jia,

You should not have to worry about layer conversion/mapping in revit if you are going fbx->obj. However, your families will need to have useful materials assigned, where useful is defined as a unique name rather than a <by category>, does that make sense?

When you "save as" obj from Rhino there is a checkbox for materials that you should check.

-Jack

···

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Jia Hu wrote:

Hello Jack:
You are right, I should convert fbx to obj. I am not very familar with different types of formats. In revit, some families categories are combined into one layer. My way is to re-define them by myself and in this case I can get different layers with different materials.
Thank you,
Jia

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Radiance-general mailing list
[email protected]
http://www.radiance-online.org/mailman/listinfo/radiance-general

[Jack_de_Valpine]

Hi Jia,

Thanks! I have to admit it took some trial and error to get it figured out...

-Jack

···

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Jia Hu wrote:

It is a very good way by converting FBX to obj via FBX converter and then using Rhino to import obj. It contains all material information and can be used by obj2rad.
Thank you!
Jia

On Thu, May 6, 2010 at 3:34 PM, Jia Hu <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:

    Hello Jack:
         You are right, I should convert fbx to obj. I am not very familar
    with different types of formats. In revit, some families
    categories are combined into one layer. My way is to re-define
    them by myself and in this case I can get different layers with
    different materials.
         Thank you,
    Jia
     
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[Hu_Jia]

Hi Jack:

In Rhino, I use "Rebuild mesh normal" tool to make zero "vn" disappear. Is
that right?

Thanks,
Jia

[Jack_de_Valpine]

yes I believe that is it.

···

--
# Jack de Valpine
# president
#
# visarc incorporated
# http://www.visarc.com
#
# channeling technology for superior design and construction

Jia Hu wrote:

Hi Jack:
In Rhino, I use "Rebuild mesh normal" tool to make zero "vn" disappear. Is that right?
Thanks,
Jia
------------------------------------------------------------------------

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