Autocad to 3DS grouping?

[Dune]

Has anyone here ever worked with autocad? I have an architect who needs to export/convert her autocad file to an object. She uses Rhino, but ends up with a file containing 250 groups and the same amount of materials, all white. While she only had 5 layers, and I suppose a nice grouping of materials.
I am not looking forward to try to determine what each piece is for each building (hours of work, I think), so I adviced her to group according to material, 'delete' or disable the other groups/materials, and export each material as a separate object. That way it is easier for me to merge them again, and have the parts all grouped as one material.

But I don't believe there wouldn't be a simpler way of exporting from Autocad to 3DS and keep the grouping of materials intact. So, that is my question; can anyone tell me whether, and how, that is possible?

[ajcgi]

Have you tried using a demo of deep exploration? It's an old bit of software now but I used to use it for odd esoteric file changes like this. You can hook up shaders, textures, etc, in the viewport if anythings breaks, rename bits, group them etc. The amount of different files it can handle is large, with varying degrees of success. 3ds always seemed fine to me.

[Dune]

It's up to the architect to make it work, so I'll pass on your suggestion. I haven't got Autocad, know nothing about it and don't want to either  She might make it work that way. Thanks, Alex.

[KlausK]

I don`t know about the grouping thing but she might want to try to export in *.fbx format.
That seems to be the preferred file type in ACAD today.
Since ACAD 2009 the 3ds file format has been deprecated.
If that does not work, maybe try *.dxf.

here are some helpful links:

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2017/ENU/AutoCAD-Core/files/GUID-AE2B5A3E-2068-4706-AE83-926C26C6EE9C-htm.html

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Exporting-to-3DS-format-from-AutoCAD.html

https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/autocad/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/When-you-import-an-FBX-file-from-AutoCAD-into-3ds-Max-the-textures-are-not-imported.html

Nevermind, if this is all old news to you / her.

cheers, Klaus

btw: perhaps it would be useful to install a 30 day trial version of 3D Studio Max for this task.
Those apps should work well together exchanging files, maybe better than ACAD and Rhino. Don`t know. Anyways...

[Dune]

Thanks Klaus, I'll pass it on.

[ajcgi]

Let us know how your friend gets on. I was asked a similar question at work lately.

[N810]

if your Acad is version 2000?-2007 you can use the 3DSOUT command.
Sadly it was discontinued in the newer versions.

[bobbystahr]

You're wise to have her suss it out herself. In trying to reverse engineer Ade's cottage with the 'bad' texture I split it up in DeepEx after saving the.tgo out from TG as an .obj, and wound up with over 1000 parts...it's now a spare time project.

[Dune]

Still trying some venues. I did get something done, but not perfect. A good friend (of ours) is having a look at it as well.