the channels menu / inventor out

channels menu

inventor out

Purpose
Writes out a model as Inventor. This model must have been previously exported from GIG (with export active or polygonize), to an intermediary (.ivdat) file format.

Usage
If you click on the button, then all .ivdat files created in this project are listed. Pick the one you want to write out as Inventor data. Your Inventor file will then be available in the intlib directory of the current project.

Comments
The model must have been exported before you can use the inventor out function. Unlike e.g. the dxf out channel, there are two ways to export a model: you can polygonize it with the polygonize function in the edit poly submenu, or you can use the export active button.

Files exported through the polygonize function contain polygon sets only, with surface colors and optionaly surface normals and UV coordinates.

Files exported through the export active function can contain non-polygonal objects (such as cubes, cylinders and trimmed Nurbs) as well. Through this option, the GIG entities are converted as follows:

Cube, Cone, Cylinder, Sphere, Polygons: converted to their Inventor equivalent
Freeforms, Splineskins, Nurbs, Text, Torus: converted to Inventor NurbsSurfaces
Isosurfaces: converted to Inventor PolygonSets when 'S evaluated', ignored otherwise
Particles: ignored
Boolean operations: converted to Inventor Separator nodes (the boolean operations subtract and intersect are written to an Inventor Info node)
Tagnames: written to Inventor Info nodes
Attributes: approximated with Inventor Material nodes
Grids, Forcefields: invisible entities, thus ignored

Known bugs
Note that boolean operations are not part of the current Inventor specifications. For the moment, GIG writes these nodes as common Separator nodes, with the boolean information in an additional Info node. The only way to really write the evaluated boolean to Inventor is to polygonize the subtree, effectively replacing it with a polygon set.
Some Inventor viewers (e.g. ivview) display NurbsSurfaces with lighting applied to only one side. If the wrong side is facing the spectator, then the surface will appear unlighted, i.e. black. Because Inventor computes its own normal vectors, the only remedy would be to remodel the offending surface inside out.