Don wrote:
My son is in his fourth year and uses ArchiCad while many of the other students use Rhino. He hasn't been able to move files back and forth successfully and he said a Google search didn't result in anything useful.
I did a search on the forum and didn't find anything conclusive. Anyone have any success or recent results?
Thanks,
Don Lee
ArchiCAD to Rhino : Export your models or scene in 3ds or obj format (Rhino handles a large number of formats, though), and then once there if they need to edit or modify the geometry, they may have to use Rhino's MESHtoNURB command.
Rhino to ArchiCAD : This one will be a bit of a problem or at least a challenge, for the simple fact that ArchiCAD can't handle Nurbs geometry at all or, at least, the more complex geometry formats that Rhino converts NURBS-gemoetry into, as easily. In any case his best case scenario, will be either:
a) to have them export them as 3ds from Rhino (with as few polygons or triangle faces as possible) and then use the 3ds-import addon in ArchiCAD to import it as a static gdl object (no editing beyond scaling and rotation)
or
b) save it as a 3D dwg object from Rhino and use the import library component function in ArchiCAD. I never use it much myself and don't know how much editing it would allow, but I would imagine it has its limits.
or
c) If he has it, export the object into Sketchup (import as 3ds), save the .skp file from sketchup and then import into ArchiCAD using the Sketchup import add-on which allows far more customization of the imported object and converts the imported geometry into ArchiCAD native elements like walls, slabs, roofs, etc, for potential editing in ArchiCAD. Even with a lot of customization and tweaking during the import, it's still very tricky as you could end up with a lot of faces and elements imported the wrong way or in the wrong format, giving you a somewhat useless object
A fourth, somewhat less likely method would have been to use Maxonform which can import 3ds's, and obj, and then even allow you to optimize the geometry (polycount-wise) prior to importing it directly into ArchiCAD, but since Maxonform was discontinued, he would be limited to using previous versions (of both Maxonform and AC), if at all, to do it this way.
Regardless, all three methods (4 if you count Maxonform) are, of course, dependent on the complexity of the original 3D Rhino Geometry, and ArchiCAD's ability to handle the polycount. And even when it does import back, there's always the likely hood that you will not get an accurate representation (degenerated mesh, too many contour lines, faceting etc etc) in the imported object.
In essence, it's never a good idea to import non-native (non-GDL) geometry into ArchiCAD for editing or worse still documentation due to AC's limitations in, or outright inability to handle organic/freeform meshes. I would say keep it strictly one-way : ArchiCAD-to-Rhino, if he's having to work with Rhino users to exchange information back and forth.
