As I mentioned in a previous post we see MoI as an ideal format translation utility as well as a damn fine nurbs modeler.

We've been experimenting with exporting architectural visualization scenes as both IGES and SAT into MoI (we prefer SAT by the way for those who are interested) and then 'exploding' all the scene elements and renaming/grouping individual surfaces (using the join function to create new polysurfaces) into logical surface groups ready for texturing in our rendering software of choice. The automatic UV mapping is a real time saver and we tend to find that the only tweaks we have to make further down the pipeline is individual UV tiling attributes for the different surfaces. The ability to reset the viewport scene focus on the fly is a seamless workflow enhancer too.

I'm aware that we could use 'styles' in much the same way but this creates a separate material for each style with OBJ exports (which can be a pain), the important thing for us is having a near perfect set of UV's to work with. Mapping out UV's is the bane of every modelers life (well most that I've met anyway!) so this bonus discovery has been a real delight to us all as it wasn't something we necessarily expected.

Cheers

jm