Hello All,

I’ve been frantically scouring the internet in search of the answer to my questions.

I’m in a bit of a pickle. I’m working on the design and fabrication of a piece of sports equipment. I had a friend create a model which he made in MAYA. Now we need to take that model and open it in Rhino so that my CAD guy can clean it up then send it to the rapid prototyper so we can make it real.

So far we’ve tried a number of file formats (OBJ, IGES, FBX) and the only one with a glimmer of hope has been FBX. It actually opens and shows a portion of the mesh. There in lies the problem. It’s only showing a patch of the complete mesh.

So the questions:

What are we doing wrong?
Is there a specific way we have to prep the file for export?
Is there a better way to get this into either Rhino or Autocad for the rapid prototyper?

Thank you a million in advance!
Grav

Hi Grav !

Well, I’ll ask some questions first to clarify things....

a) Which version of MAYA are you using ?
b) Which version of the FBX plugin within MAYA are you using ?
c) Can the mesh you’ve created in MAYA “survive” a round trip back into MAYA in tact/uncorrupted ?
d) Have you tried opening the FBX directly in ACAD ?....or only in Rhino ? ( I ask this since ACAD 2011 now supports FBX and I know that they are using the up-to-date SDK )

It is important to note that the same versions of FBX plugins should be used accross pipelines, I’m not sure which version of the FBX SDK Rhino is using...and this is an important point, since when I visited Rhino’s web site and was looking at Rhino 4.0’s features list, when I looked at their “New Compatibility Enhancements” section, they listed DWG compatibility up to ACAD 2007....and there is a much newer format available ( 2010 ) and ACAD itself is now up to a 2011 version.....( just speculating here ).

It could be that the version of FBX that MAYA is saving in ( assuming that it’s a very recent version )
is too new for the version of FBX that Rhino is using, in which case you can try saving in an older version of FBX - this can be found in the MAYA FBX export UI under “FBX File Format” “Version”, or you can use the FBX converter to convert current FBX files into older versions of FBX files.

Please get back to us and let us know if this solution works for you…

I Hope this Helps !
- Damon