Hi Mark, I'm not familiar with DesignCAD 3D Max - it looks like it may be related to TurboCAD and it seems like it may be a kind of cut down feature limited version of TurboCAD or something like that?

From what I could see on its page here:
http://imsidesign.com/Products/DesignCADSeries/DesignCAD3DMAXVersion21/KeyFeatures/tabid/1834/Default.aspx

it seems to be more focused on importing only 2D drawings from other programs, you would probably be better off with the full version of TurboCAD that has more functionality in it - you should be able to more easily take MoI models into the full version of TurboCAD while that 3D solids import functionality looks like it may be missing from DesignCAD 3D Max...

But I'm not really sure about it since I'm not familiar with it and I'm just going by the description on their web site.

- Michael

Hi Mark,

Are you referring to the Contour CAM plugin for DesignCAD 3D Max?

It is unclear from the information that I read on the DesignCAD 3D Max website whether modeling is done as polygonal or nurbs surfaces. If you are prompted to enter the resolution of the surface or object you are generating, then you are probably dealing with polygonal modeling.

You can certainly cut polygonal models on a cnc machine, and with sufficient resolution, can be indistinguishable from nurbs models.
The advantage of MoI and programs that use nurbs surfaces is that the surfaces are resolution independent, and can be scaled or modified without losing resolution. Also, boolean operations with nurbs surfaces generally produce better geometry.

Chris

The other advantage with a NURBS surface for CNC is a curved surface at high resolution with a polygon format with be a heavy surface to calculate (Millions of poly's???).. The same NURBS surface can be a very small definition..