Saturday, April 23, 2016

Windows 10 with 3DS Max and Is Revit any good?

To get your Revit model into 3ds Max is a bit of a trick.

Previously, I would save it as an fbx file and open 3dsmax and then use the "architectural" option to load my file.

Almost every time, this resulted in poor renderings and lots of stuffing around.

The for some reason I happened upon someone who had inside knowledge on this: apparently there is an option under the corner button (top left hand), choose Suite Workflow, then choose exterior rendering. That is, until you upgrade to Windows 10.....

I decided to finally put Windows 10 on my PC, and this worked out ok, as Revit and Autocad still worked well, if not better than before.

Unfortunately, the above technique resulted in the following error message on linking to 3DS Max:

"Autodesk.Max.Wrappers.dll encountered an error while loading."

After a lot of blind alleys later, I could not fix it. so I uninstalled Windows 10.  Three days later, I turned on my PC and wandered off to watch TV and came back to find Windows 10 installing itself!

Looks like I'm stuck with Windows 10!  Having got a bit grumpy about not being asked, I can say that I like the look and speed of it, even if it is a little flat coloured compared to Windows 7.

It still has most of the familiar stuff in sensible places so seems easy to get around in.
Anyway, a little digging and I have found a thing that did work:  Just change the 3dsmax.ini file: just one line to look for:

EnableCoreInterfaceProxySystem=1

Set the 1 to a 0 and save.  Job done, works fine now!

The Youtube video has no words and seems to imply you need to fiddle around with your video card at the start, but about half way in it shows how to change the ini file.  I just did the ini file and it worked fine.

Thanks to Vazha Gelashvili, and his/her Youtube video, here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnPURNuDVNQ

This makes an amazing difference!  Just press Render and off it goes.

Another trick is to take the resulting image and open it in Microsoft Picture Manager and choose autobrighten. Again, a big difference.

On the front of "is Revit any good, or have we all been conned?", I have found a blog by someone who uses a lot of naughty language to put forward his point that it is a disaster.  Makes interesting reading, but he is an electrical engineer/draftsman, so he mainly has to deal with Revit files that sound not too well done, so does this make Revit a good thing to stay away from?

Here is his link, which if you are offended by bad language, I advise not to visit: http://therevitmepskullfvck.blogspot.co.nz/

I am still trying to get a handle on the answer to "is Revit any good?".  It occurred to me last week that most of what I do is documentation. There is one job that I just cannot seem to get out from under on.  About 2 weeks so far:  the plan, elevations, site plan were all drawn by someone else before me, so all I had to organize were the sections, roof plan, foundation plan and floor framing plan.

This is just a fairly simple renovation job on a two story house.  Then all the details.  Still not finished, so I can imagine another day or two on this one.  It feels like having Revit would make no difference in the documentation end of things.  Maybe?

One thing I did do that I found quite neat the other day was drawing a deck next to a round swimming pool. Just arrange a beam system for the deck boards and job done. This would have take ages in standard Autocad.

More research required.






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