I had so many troubles with CAD data I really can’t say it is easier at all… From complex file formats from various vendors, standards like STEP that produces humongous files and the end result of advanced NURBS it is really not fun to deal with. I ended up using Rhino to have an export but I don’t understand how does not come as standard tool in 3D packages (and specially Maya given its connection with AD product line). - Again, may be I am missing something here regarding CAD data..
* I know what you mean, we do predominantly automotive, so we work a lot with CAD. STEP is a format we use a lot, especially with interop. Maya can take STP but only if you install Direct Connect that originally came from Alias. AD have appeared to replace that with some new file format translation stuff and removed (bizarrely) some export capability. But anyway, we don’t take STEPs into Maya/Max, we go through Rhino to clean it, we even wrote a Shotgun integration. Rhino is great, very very stable. But we have a bunch of tools that allows us to batch and process STEP files large and small, so for us we can handle CAD very well. The key with CAD data is how its exported from the source, this can make a big difference and if someone receives CAD from a client, this can be where the problems start. >From what I saw with NEX, seemed to my naked eye (correct me if I am wrong) >like little more than the same tools we had for years in XSI (then Softimage) >so I was certainly not impressed. Regarding the UV layout, it was bad Graham, very bad… the UVs were unusable with bad padding all over, non-coherent results from every iteration of the unfold… artifacts on the edges… There were things in NEX that Soft did have, but also things it didn’t. It was by far the No.1 modelling plugin toolset for Maya, probably why AD bought it. In many Maya users would tell us to simply buy it and implement it properly and fully, so they did. I’ve never minded Maya’s UV editor, but then production wise I’ve had an array of additional scripts and tools for it, which is both a plus and minus for Maya. Out of the box, I’d say that Soft always had the best UV editor. I am sure any package has an audience and if it works for you, great… if you can make money out of it… well, that is the trick right? My reasoning is that the things we were doing 6 years ago with Softimage (and still today), you can’t do today with Maya, Max or anything other than Houdini… and that is hard thing to swallow. I would agree with that. Even now Soft has many things that are better than a lot of packages out there. It’s funny seeing the Max guys wax lyrical about the Max Creation Graph, which is as blatant a rip-off ICE as you can get. It’s both funny and sad seeing Max guys getting excited about doing stuff that we were able to do ICE 9 years ago!
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