Mike,
The intent of my question was specifically why chose Materials based rules? What do you want to do with the model in the other program?
I went to the help menu in AC to see what the reasoning is behind the options:
3D Studio File (.3ds)
With the 3D window in front you can save 3D models of your projects in AutoDesk’s 3D Studio 3DS photorealistic rendering and animation file format.
The resulting document will include the following information:
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3D model geometry: All surfaces and all edges.
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Surface materials: All materials used in the project, including the name and the characteristics.
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Light sources: Both the sun and the additional light sources are included. Sun will be handled as a spotlight very far away from the project.
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3D projection: The current perspective settings and Fly Through paths are included.
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Shadow casting information: The current shadow casting setup in the PhotoRendering Settings/Effects dialog box of ArchiCAD is included.
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Smooth (welding) information: The smoothing setup in the PhotoRendering Settings/Effects dialog box of ArchiCAD is included.
After choosing the .3ds file format, click Save. The Save 3D as 3D Studio object dialog box opens:
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Construct 3D Studio objects according to ArchiCAD objects: Click this button to create a 3D Studio file without grouping.
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Construct 3D Studio objects according to Element types and Materials: Click this button to create a group in the 3D Studio file for each ArchiCAD construction element, and within these groups, create internal groups for each surface material.
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Construct 3D Studio objects according to Layers and Materials: Click this button to create groups in the 3D Studio file for each ArchiCAD layer, and within these groups, create internal groups for each surface material.
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Construct 3D Studio objects according to Materials: Click this button to create a group in the 3D Studio file for each surface material.
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Drawing Unit: In this field, you can define the distance in the ArchiCAD project that will be translated into a drawing unit in 3D Studio. As ArchiCAD works with metric data internally, setting the drawing unit to 1 meter (=1000 mm) will result in a 1:1 model after the conversion.
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Colors: You can choose either the ArchiCAD pen colors, or match the ArchiCAD colors to a similar 3D Studio color.
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ArchiCAD texture information: You can select whether to include material texture information in the 3D Studio file.
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Object = Group Name: You can select whether the object’s name should be a generated unique ID or the group’s name.
Note that 3D Studio works with names up to 10 characters. For names generated by ArchiCAD the convention is the following:
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Chars 1 to 7: unique ID or clipped layer/material name.
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Chars 8 to 9: used for a distinctive number to avoid identical names generated by clipping. Up to 100 variations of the same name are allowed this way.
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Char 10: used for slicing information. 3D Studio can handle up to 65,536 polygons by object. If an object has multiple polygons, ArchiCAD will split the object into several objects and put the segment number into Char 10.
Erika
Architect, Consultant
MacBook Pro Retina, 15-inch Yosemite 2.8 GHz Intel Core i7 16 GB 1600 MHz DDR3
Mac OSX 10.11.1
AC5-18
Onuma System
"Implementing Successful Building Information Modeling"
