How can I use the new 3D PDF Feature in IRender nXt.

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Permalink Reply by Geof Narlee on April 16, 2011 at 4:35pm

Hi Al,

I was having trouble quickly assigning "glass" material to Revit windows imported to Sketchup (via .dwg) in a way that worked with 3D PDF (which "Color by Layer" doesn't seem to). And I found you had been chasing this down in 2008 via Ruby's "Material by Layer." Did you ever figure it out for porting to your plugin? Otherwise, it's incredibly tedious changing all those windows over.

 

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 17, 2011 at 6:28am

Do you mean a similar 3D PDF/Rendered Image for Revit?

If so, I suspect we will add that to AccuRender for Revit as well.

Or do you mean, an implementation of RPS 3D PDF for Revit

(RPS 3D PDF has some additional features which will not be in the 3D PDF/Rendered Image product)

If so, Yes - we could do that. I am not sure why we haven't done it yet.

Or, do you mean some other sort of Plugin?

- We do have AccuRender nXt for Revit - which I see from other posts that you are aware of.

Did you have anything else in mind?

Geof Narlee said:

Al. This thing is great. Questions

1) Any thoughts of a plug-in for Revit?

Regards,

Geof Narlee

 

 

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 17, 2011 at 6:52am

It sounds like what is needed here is a feature to assign a SketchUp material to each face to match the layer of the face. If we did that for just one layer at a time, then you could set the transparency of the glass by layer.

 

However, there seem to be lots of problems converting "color by layer" in DWG files to something useful.

(I have been searching around in the SketchUcation forums and noticing that quite a few people have problems after importing Revit files and then wanting to work with the materials)

Geof Narlee said:

Hi Al,

I was having trouble quickly assigning "glass" material to Revit windows imported to Sketchup (via .dwg) in a way that worked with 3D PDF (which "Color by Layer" doesn't seem to). And I found you had been chasing this down in 2008 via Ruby's "Material by Layer." Did you ever figure it out for porting to your plugin? Otherwise, it's incredibly tedious changing all those windows over.

 

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Permalink Reply by Geof Narlee on April 17, 2011 at 7:09am

I didn't know there was a difference?!:) So...yes on both! (what's the difference. I know RPS 3D PDF is interactive, but don't know what 3D PDF/Rendered image is...).

 

Al Hart said:

Do you mean a similar 3D PDF/Rendered Image for Revit?

If so, I suspect we will add that to AccuRender for Revit as well.

Or do you mean, an implementation of RPS 3D PDF for Revit

(RPS 3D PDF has some additional features which will not be in the 3D PDF/Rendered Image product)

If so, Yes - we could do that. I am not sure why we haven't done it yet.

Or, do you mean some other sort of Plugin?

- We do have AccuRender nXt for Revit - which I see from other posts that you are aware of.

Did you have anything else in mind?

Geof Narlee said:

Al. This thing is great. Questions

1) Any thoughts of a plug-in for Revit?

Regards,

Geof Narlee

 

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Geof Narlee on April 17, 2011 at 7:19am

"could set the transparency of the glass by layer."

- - - Exactly. That would solve it for me, short of a more direct solution for Revit to RPS 3D PDF (heaven). The glass actually does come in on its own layer. And I can set most of my other needed objects on their own layer (unfortunately Revit isn't directly set up to export Material-By-Layer). So yes, I saw a 2008 thread on SketchUcation where it looked you were trying to pull that functionality from Sketchup to your product. You know, how you can set the Sketchup Color-By-Layer visual but it unfortunately doesn't read out that way in RPS 3D PDF, so I have to edit each object individually, which is very inefficient. I think you had gotten as far as being able to get at the materials defined by layer, but couldn't get at the material scales, or something like that.

 

Yes, I use nXt for Revit. It's great. The only thing that you guys have been struggling with is Revit's API was restricting/obscuring texture info, so the pre-render nXt prep for Revit is delayed (compared to nXt for AutoCAD). Revit's 2012 API is supposedly more friendly for 3rd-Party plugins. But I'm not a coder, so I don't really know, but that's what some of the techie API forums are saying is the intent. I passed along some links to Rich.

Al Hart said:

It sounds like what is needed here is a feature to assign a SketchUp material to each face to match the layer of the face. If we did that for just one layer at a time, then you could set the transparency of the glass by layer.

 

However, there seem to be lots of problems converting "color by layer" in DWG files to something useful.

(I have been searching around in the SketchUcation forums and noticing that quite a few people have problems after importing Revit files and then wanting to work with the materials)

Geof Narlee said:

Hi Al,

I was having trouble quickly assigning "glass" material to Revit windows imported to Sketchup (via .dwg) in a way that worked with 3D PDF (which "Color by Layer" doesn't seem to). And I found you had been chasing this down in 2008 via Ruby's "Material by Layer." Did you ever figure it out for porting to your plugin? Otherwise, it's incredibly tedious changing all those windows over.

 

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 17, 2011 at 7:42am

I moved the materials by layer part of this to a new thread:

 

http://irendernxt.com/forum/topics/changing-materials-on-imported

 

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 17, 2011 at 8:05am

 

I didn't know there was a difference?!:) So...yes on both! (what's the difference. I know RPS 3D PDF is interactive, but don't know what 3D PDF/Rendered image is...).

By "3D PDF/Rendered Image" I meant the new feature we added to IRender nXt this week. RPS 3D PDF does not include an image - just the interactive 3D PDF. RPS 3D PDF will have some features which are not included in the IRender nXt version. (We want to encourage people to purchase the Combo Pack which will include both of these products, plus some more like RpTools, SpaceDesign, etc.)

 

Differences:

 

3D PDF in IRender nXt can only be run after extracting and rendering the model.

 

RPS 3D PDF will not automatically add the rendered image. (We will probably fix it to add a SketchUp image)

 

Some features will only be in RPS 3D PDF:

(Some of these are in the IRender nXt version, but we will be removing them next week and including them only in RPS 3D PDF.)

 

• Create U3D file for use with Adobe Acrobat
• Create HTML page with embedded PDF
• Embed 3D PDF into an existing PDF (We have not written this yet. It will let you create PDFs from other sources, and them embed the 3D PDF into the existing PDF)

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Permalink Reply by Geof Narlee on April 17, 2011 at 8:24am

This is great stuff, IMO.

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Permalink Reply by Geof Narlee on April 17, 2011 at 12:29pm

I've been trying to post at SketchUcation (saw you there today), because I found a Ruby that TIG wrote 1-1/2 years ago that might be useful, but they haven't cleared my posts yet.

Currently, my workaround in Sketchup is to make sure my stuff is on different subcategories in Revit, rename a the associated layers before export. Then in Sketchup to isolate those layers and apply materials. Not a very "automatic" way to do things.

 

But, yes, if you guys can make something for Revit, that would be great & I wouldn't have to do all these crazy work-arounds with Sketchup:

from Al Hart:

"Do you mean a similar 3D PDF/Rendered Image for Revit?

If so, I suspect we will add that to AccuRender for Revit as well.

Or do you mean, an implementation of RPS 3D PDF for Revit

(RPS 3D PDF has some additional features which will not be in the 3D PDF/Rendered Image product)

If so, Yes - we could do that. I am not sure why we haven't done it yet."

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Permalink Reply by stewed on April 19, 2011 at 9:44am

I installed the latest version, KD18, and got the following error messages while trying to create a PDF:

 

When I click preview I get:

 

Cannot open file: 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Render Plus Systems\IRender_nXt\bin_PDF\rtf2pdf\u3d_image_area_rtf.txt'

    (VER: 2.0 KD18p - STEWEDPC v- )
         (Error occurred in ..\rps\rps_std.cpp line: 439)

 

I don't have a directory called rtf2pdf in C:\Program Files (x86)\Render Plus Systems\IRender_nXt\bin_PDF.

 

This is followed by:

 

Cannot open U3D image space file: C:\Program Files (x86)\Render Plus Systems\IRender_nXt\bin_PDF\rtf2pdf\u3d_image_area_rtf.txt

    (VER: 2.0 KD18p - STEWEDPC - )
         (Error occurred in .\create_pdf_old.cpp line: 2483)

 

 

When I click Create PDF I get:

 

Cannot open file: 'C:\Users\stwe\AppData\Local\Temp\nXt_batch\batch_file.txt'

    (VER: 2.0 KD18p - STEWEDPC - )
         (Error occurred in ..\rps\rps_std.cpp line: 439)

 

I have no file called batch_file.txt in C:\Users\stwe\AppData\Local\Temp\nXt_batch. There is a file called batch_file.bin there though.

 

And I still get the "xx days left for trial mode" message in the wizard window.

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Permalink Reply by stewed on April 19, 2011 at 10:07am

I disabled "Use binary batch format" and that got the "Create PDF" working. The preview still doesn't work though.

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Permalink Reply by Render Plus on April 19, 2011 at 11:05am

BIN - thanks for catching this, we will fix it.

 

Trial Days - can you load the License dialog and see if you have entered your license number?

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