Hello Scott,

thanks for considering. Yes, FACT definitely does support nested groups. Currently I can export nested groups from (the old) EI Modeler, FormZ and PolyTrans... so there *is* a way to get this working :-)

Bernd

I was doing some testing about grouping objects for export (meeting a possible bug in the process). See here: http://forum.punchcad.com/showthread.php?t=292

Ideally there ought to be two ways of producing merged sets of objects for FACT and other formats that support parenting: true merged sets of objects (the receiving apps understand them as a single object), and encasing Nulls-parented hierarchical sets of separate objects. ViaCAD grouping system lends itself to producing the second type.

For the true merge type, one can Boolean-add the relevant objects into one (although it must be done one by one instead of several at once, which is cumbersome even if I understand ViaCAD probably can't boolean-add more than two at once). Perhaps it would be interesting to have Join and Separate tools that explicitly merge objects for export, able to do several ones at once (as they won't need to calculate any boolean operation at all).

Merging and Grouping per colour, layer or group would still be a very interesting addition to general export options.

Guilty as charged :D (even if EIModeler had those, too. We EIAS guys must look like a nightmare to Mr. Olson and crew, always pretending to impose our evil EI ways :)).

>>this might be helpful in order to get some structured files out of VC (or CU):

Currently the best way may be to use DXF R12. It retains layers and polymesh groupings. Use R12 to have facet data embedded into the file vs ACIS data.

Exporting surfaces/solids to R12 uses the display list resolution which is controled by the fine, medium, super fine settings.

However, R12 does not support surface normals per vertex. VRML v2 supports vertex normals directly calculated from the underlying NURB.