Converting an Surface Imported from 3D Studio Max into a Solid

Wash your file thru a program that will convert the polygon mesh to planar NURBS surfaces. Rhino (mesh2nurbs command) or Acad (via IGES export) are good bets. Don't believe (?) there's a way to do it in Pro/E. Don't expect it to "work" like a real surface rep converted to solid. All those vertices and edges are not meant for conventional modeling methods.

I am writing to ask for help, from this forum, in converting a surface into a solid.

3D studio max has a feature that allows you to use an image to displace vertices on a plane.

in the example, a gray scale image of P. Bush was used.

I'd like to convert this surface into a solid in either Pro-E or Solidworks.

Sounds like you got it imported into Pro/e and you're looking for a command to turn it into a solid. If so, pick the import feature, go to the Edit menu and look for Solidify or Thicken. If they are greyed out, there's some flaw with the surface. But, more than likely, thicken will be available if it's a surface like a spoon or boat shell (i.e., not enclosed). When you pick this menu item, you should get a screen that meshes the surface and gives you a default direction of thickening, probably the generally positive direction of curvature. The arrow pointing in that direction can be clicked to change the direction. The thickness should appear in a box as a numerical value and onscreen and be selectable and modifiable in either place.

David Janes

David is right that is how you would solidfy feature. I use Pro E all the time at work for most of its uses. I play, tinker with Max on the side and have gotten quiet good at it. If I was you I would create my surface in max, save as iges, and then import to proe. Mess around with the solidify feature, like David said if the surface is not perfect, and max outputs some terrible surfaces, this can be very frustrating to solidify it. I would then ask why? Why are you brieng in surface in to proe of Bush? Do you want to cut it using a cnc?, make a mold from it? Once I start with Max I would try to do as much with max as I could and leave the file translation out of it. On a side note try STL they work with less errors sometimes.

Has anyone looked at the jpg? Haven't seen REX or Restyle mentioned. Is there some other way of working Facet models or features to get to a Solid?

Good point about faceted surfaces, don't know for sure that you can solidify/thicken them. Which brings to mind another question: why facets, why not, as Shaun suggests, exporting an essentially NURBS surface, which is the native modelling method of 3dStudio, through a format that preserves a modifiable geometry format, like IGES or STEP. With facet features and REX, you are limited to the following for creating thin protrusions:

seems to be merely using REX to copy facet faces, turn them into surfaces. These surfaces, within a Restyle feature, can be directly manipulated, though it doesn't seem that you can do much directly with the faceted surface. Also, the facet vertices can be used to create datum curves which can also be used to create surfaces. A pretty cumbersome process, even if it does get you kind of what you want.

Anyway, it seems that a facet feature is a possible construction from laser scan or cmm data, the more points, the smaller the facets. And, yes, if someone has this data, the best place to work with it would be directly in REX. Or keep it in 3dStudio. I don't know about the ADesk product, but REX certainly has tools to avoid the facet stage, manipulate and refine the point data and convert it directly to NURBS curves and surfaces. This type of surface is most easily worked with in Pro/SURFACE or ISDX and is easily merged with other surfaces to make an enclosed, watertight volume or an open quilt. Either is easily turned into a solid model.

thanks very much to everybody for the help.

i did the meshtonurbs process in Rhino, exported as an IGES file, Pro-E successfully added thickness to make it a solid.

when i do "thicken" in Solidworks, i'm getting an error message.

i took the solid into One Space Designer and used it as a tool to cut 2 solids in half, leaving an imprint which would be useful in future modelling except for one thing.

file size.

a 50 x 50 mesh worked, the larger meshes totally locked up the 3 computers involved.

i'm trying to use gray-scale photographs to allow me to model characters for animation faster.

i'm in the process of learning Max, but i have about 15 years experience with some solid modelling tools. basically i get more work done faster working in a solid modeller.