what 3d modeling program can run with autocad?

[sly-18e]

hey guys

im new here i stumbled on your site and love all the cars on here. i actually work with autocad every day and i was just wondering what 3d programs can save a file that i can then import into autocad. jus some parts are alot easier to draw to scale in cad.

ne help would be great guys. and hopefully ill put some stuff up that will help u guys in the future

[tom120934]

The usual file format for exchange with AutoCAD is .dxf. Most of CG package can read / write it. Blender does it, but you may want a more mainstream software.

[sly-18e]

i have used .dxf files for work they are quite easy to use. i tried saving some maya files as .dxf but they just didnt come out very nice in cad.

[multimediaman]

not sure on this, but .3ds should be a pretty usable CAD format... I believe blender also saves .3ds files, even zmodeler may be able to, but I'm not sure on that one...

granted, you won't be able to do much at all with an imported .3ds file, but if it supports it, you'd at least get to use the mesh inside the CAD package.

Though in all honesty, if you're wanting to combine the objects, you may be better off just exporting what's in the CAD package and importing into a capable 3d graphics package



As for the scale, it's all relative.

If you're going for a detailed drawing that you want to measure things in fractions of a milimeter, CAD may work better, but for the most part, you should be fine with most 3d packages, when working with dimensions, especially the big packages like maya, lightwave, or 3dsmax