9

Importing Autodesk Inventor Files 553
Thecomponentsofmodelsthatyouimportinto
3ds Max retain their object naming as assigned in
Autodesk Inventor and appear as editable meshes
(page 1–996).Onceimported,youcaneditthe
model just as you would any other typ e of object
that you construct. You can apply modifiers,
alter materials, add lighting and cameras, c reate
animations, etc.
Requirements a nd Limitations
In order to be able to import models that originate
from Autodesk Inventor, In ventor 8, or later, is
required to be installed along w ith 3ds Max on the
system.
Atthistime,therearesomelimitationstothe
Inventor Importer. They are as follows:
• Camera animation paths are not converted to
3ds Max c ameras so any animation you’ve set
up in Inventor is lost during import.
• Any lighting from brightness and ambience
settings created in the Inventor fi le are not
imported. You will have to relight the scene
once the import is complete.
• Amodelthatissetupwithconstraintsto
limit the movement of parts will lose those
constraints upon import. You will need to use
inverse kinematics (IK) (page 2–435) to restore
the constraints.
• Dragging and dropping an Inventor file into
3dsMaxusesthesettingslastsetonthe
Inventor File Import dia log with the except for
Mesh Resolution, w hich always resets to 0.
• 3ds Max uses the last version of Inventor that
was opened to set the Import version. For
instance, let’s say you have both Inventor 8 and
Inventor 10 on your system. If the last version
of Inventor you ran was Inventor 8, you cannot
import Inventor 10 files. Inventor 8 must be
closed and Inventor 10 opened, at least once, in
order for you to successfully import Inventor
10 files.
Ma ter ia l Hand ling
Materials and material assignments made to the
original Inventor model are retained and imported
along with the geometr y. Materials are imported
as Architectural materials (page 2–1535) or if a
single object has several materials assigned to it,
they are i mpor ted a s a Multi/Sub-Object material
(page 2–1594).
Procedures
To impor t a n IAM or I PT file:
1.
Choose File menu > Import.
2. Choose Autodesk Inventor (*.IPT, * .IAM) in
the Files of Type list.
3. Specify a file name to import.
4. Set options in the Autodesk Inventor File
Import dialog.