Import ANYTHING to BLENDER !!

Hello, I have some furniture modeled by the client in AutoCAD and I want to import it in Blender.

I tried:

  • export from AutoCAD .fbx then import in Blender = fail
  • import in 3ds Max then export as .fbx .3ds .abc .dae .obj .stl then import in Blender = fail

Please help me finding a way to properly import some files in Blender.

What do you exactly mean by ‘fail’ ? Examples ?
Are you sure the object was not imported but you are not actually seeing it (check the outliner, object size and viewport clip distances)

Directly from AutoCAD (.fbx) I got this error “version 7000 unsupported, must be 7100 or later” so I use Autodesk FBX Converter. With this one I can open the .fbx but I can’t add modifiers without making a mess, so all the round parts remains with only a few facets and it’s far from being render ready.
If I got the original .dwg file through 3ds Max, I either have the same problem as with the converter mentioned above or the object is small or inexistent. I can see the parts in scene list but I don’t see them in the viewer and I tried zooming and scaling and nothing.

I uploaded some files here.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0ByuYvrLSw3a0bmZHZ1NLb1U3NVk

that’s what happens with just trying :wink: solve problems by doing -
while exporting, set:
FBX File Format > Version: 2014/2015

edit: from original file.dwg > max > fbx (2014/2015) > blender = works

that’s what happens with just not reading

It’s so frustrating. I was able to export and import between AutoCAD, 3ds Max, ArchiCAD, Allplan and SketchUp but not Blender. I thought that being open source software it’s excluded from having those issues. I searched for more than half a day and no one have a clean way to import files.

maybe after importing try applying scale&rot ,remove doubles etc.or in autocad clean the file of extra objects and export to dxf(i think upto R12) or 3ds. or if it imports in sketchup export as obj from it(free scripts avlbl)

http://pasteall.org/blend/index.php?id=44071

understand scale, coordinates, settings… & tell/teach your architects to use coordinate system to their advantage (it is same junior problem all over)

Not sure where that idea came from, but no. Open source simply means the users have access to the source code for modification if they want to. Otherwise it has the same potential for file incompatibility, bugs, UI quirks, and other problems faced by conventional software development.

The problem with native MAX fbx (as I understand it) is that there may be some code in there that would be excluded from a FOSS license. It’s because of this that Blender must use it’s own “version” that is somewhat incompatible with the standard version.

To the contrary: FBX is a proprietary format by Autodesk, it is undocumented and the only officially supported way to read it is using the FBX SDK. The license for the FBX SDK is not compatible with Blender’s open-source license (GPL), so it can’t be used (at least not directly).

The solution for Blender was to painstakingly reverse-engineer a subset of the format to get some things working, but certainly not everything.

that’s what happens with just not reading

What’s that supposed to mean? Doesn’t following the steps you were given work for you?