Hi all,

many thanks for your thoughts.

I gave amabilis a go, and indeed it does import DXF as separate objects
fine. However, now I can see the DXF a bit more clearly, I can see a number
of problems with using the DXF anyway (normals are flipped, model is not as
"clean" as I would like).

So I think I shall give Moray a go for the modelling itself, and hope to
find someway of producing the plan / elevation drawings later from the
Moray model.

I think I can get the separate materials for different faces with careful
use of CSG's, but just out of interest, do you know if Moray 3.5 lets you
assign different materials by face?

Thanks again,

Leon

Patrick Elliott wrote:
>In article <web.3f079a18d64ef62c7dc35b250[at]news.povray.org>,
>leo### [at] hotmailcom says...
>> hi all,
>>
>> I'm doing a little project designing a house I'd eventually like to
>> build.... I'm trying to do it all with freeware...
>>
>> I've pretty much decided to use designworkshop lite for the basic plans, it
>> seems to do the job nicely.
>>
>> I've played around with Moray (3.3), and POVRay, and very happy with it:
>> gives the sort of rendering quality I'm looking for (I wanted radiance and
>> raytraced reflections etc).
>>
>> I can get a model in DXF format from design workshop lite to Moray using an
>> old program called "Crossroads" to generate a raw file from the DXF, then
>> importing to Moray using the standard RAW import.
>>
>> I tried 3ds win, but can't get the plugin to import DXF directly (it just
>> shows RAW in the list of files and even that doesn't work - Moray
>> crashes!).
>>
>> But the problem now is material assignment: I can't assign different
>> materials to different surfaces - only 1 material for the whole model which
>> is not very useful!!!
>>
>> Any thoughts on how I could do this?
>>
>> Any suggestions helpful, even alternative software (freeware modelling /
>> rendering) which might do the same job.
>>
>> Cheers
>>
>> Leon
>>
>
>In terms of alternative software, try Amabilis 3D Canvas. Its DXF import
>will correctly differentiate each sub object. This is one thing that
>irritated my too about a lot of programs. "I don't bloody care if it is
>all on the same layer morons, it clearly has hand, finger 1-4, thumb,
>wrist, etc. in the file, why the hell are you converting it to a single
>overlapping mesh with degenerate triangles.", was a very common thought I
>had trying out various programs, ever since I figured out I could get
>free models. lol 3D Canvas is the only one I have found that not only
>correctly separates them, but generally shows them in wire frame as
>different and visually unique objects.
>
>Note however that I have not actually tried the export to .pov yet, so I
>can't say for sure if it correctly outputs the result as more than one
>mesh. Also, unless there is a plugin around for some format that Moray
>uses (I haven't looked around to see), then as far as I know you can only
>just get a .pov file from it. However, the mere fact that you can
>manipulate each piece independently is a definite bonus over all the
>other bone headed programs that assume that every other program you plan
>to use it with will render degenerate triangles instead of throwing them
>out. I blame the prevalence of OpenGL an DirectX modellers/renderers for
>this kind of stupidity. ;) lol
>
>void main () {

>    call functional_code()
>  else
>    call crash_windows();
>}
>

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