I realize this might be viewed as heretical on this forum, but our compnay has been using Google SketchUp Pro to develop facility and satellite and launch operations hardware for the last two years. As a result we have many files: small to large, that we would like to import into Viz to provide both animation and rendering. We’ve just purchased Viz and have gone through most of the tutorials, but have had little success in manipulating imports from SketchUp as .3ds files.
Has anyone had any experience with importing SketchUp? We’d really appreciate some advice on what we might do to our SketchUp models that would make manipulation in Viz more successful.
Thanks.

We’ve always had better luck exporting a dwg or dxf out of Sketchup, then bringing that into Viz.  The geometry isn’t always perfect, and you have to make sure your materials are all set as 2 sided.

3DS Max Design 2011 64-bit - Advantage Pack
Dell Precision T5500, Dual Six Core Xeon X5650 @ 2.67GHz, nVidia Quadro 5000, 24 GB RAM, Win 7 Enterprise 64-bit
Minneapolis, MN, USA

If you hide the style lines in sketchup before you export, you dont get all of those crazy lines everywhere.

System:
Dell precision PW5490
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU
5130 @ 2.00GHZ
2.00GHZ, 4.00 GB of RAM

Display Hardware
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450/4000 DI

Thank you both for your quick responses.

I’ll give your tips a try as soon as IT gets my PC running - I’m using a MAC for this post just so I could thank you as soon as possible.

(I’m using a MAC Pro using Boot Camp and the PC side doesn’t seem to like Vista Business 64)

See the Autodesk’s Webcast (need to create login)
“How to Render Google Sketchup Models in Autodesk 3ds Max Design”
http://offers.autodesk.com/8/76704/

and more availble on the Area search tutorials and discussions

System:
Dell precision PW5490
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU
5130 @ 2.00GHZ
2.00GHZ, 4.00 GB of RAM

Display Hardware
NVIDIA Quadro FX 3450/4000 DI