Hi, and thanks as always, for the immediate help, Michael.

I actually think that I didn't quite describe my scenario accurately.
It's not so much that I have a group of objects. It's that I have ONE object, but it's comprised of hundreds of parts. So, in essence, I'm trying to "break" an object into it's component pieces, while at the same time (due to the sheer number of parts) having each of those separate parts wind up as a unique layer in the object browser.

The reason that I must have all those discrete object layers, is that I need to get this model into Cinema 4D, and it won't recognize those separate pieces if they are still living on the same layer.

Does that make any more / less sense?

Cheers!

Hi sneather, well there's not really any way for a script to recognize each separate "part" of your one big object - that would require some kind of feature recognition or pattern recognition type functionality and that's not easy to produce. All a script can do would be to see each individual face, not each "part", unless you had the unlikely case that every "part" was only made up of one single surface...

It usually takes some human judgment to categorize which faces of your big object constitute a single "part", so it's not easy to automate that, you will probably need to make selections and assign styles yourself.

It's similar to how you can't just push one button in Cinema4D and have different material groups automatically created in there as well, Cinema4D doesn't know how to divide up the big object in an automated way.

- Michael

I'm really killing this description, but I think I just figured it the proper analogy:

Say the CAD designer creates a bolt and a nut. But they wind up "joining" the two separate objects into one object, when they export the .step file. So, in MOI, I can normally jut hover over either the nut, or the bolt, and the program will recognize that it is a separate object. I can then select it, type in a new name, and presto! it's now got its own layer.

So, the same issue applies here. But in this case, I have hundreds of small parts which would need the same treatment.

Does this make any greater sense, now? I'm sorry for leading you down the wrong path, as I wasn't trying to have MOI break apart the actual surfaces of the objects.

Hi sneather, sorry but now I'm more confused about what you've got than before.


> Say the CAD designer creates a bolt and a nut. But they wind up "joining"
> the two separate objects into one object, when they export the .step file.

What do you mean by "joining" exactly - just exporting 2 objects into one file does not "join" them in the sense that they become one single object that's all physically connected together like it would happen when you boolean the 2 objects together into one single object.


> So, in MOI, I can normally jut hover over either the nut, or the bolt, and
> the program will recognize that it is a separate object.

Right, if you have this it means that you have separate objects and not just one single object.

But you wrote above that you don't have this, you said you only had one single object. So I don't understand what you have right now - do you have more than one object or just one single big object that's all physically connected together as one single piece?


> I can then select it, type in a new name, and presto! it's now got its own layer

MoI does not actually use that specific name "Layer" so that's making it a bit difficult to 100% accurately decode what you are asking about - are you talking about giving each object its own "Style" in MoI or it's own "Object name" in MoI ?

If you want each separate object to have its own individual style (which will then translate to individual materials in the OBJ file), you can do that by first using the script from above to get each object to have it's own separate name, and then after that use the script from here which creates a separate style for each named object:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3334.2

- Michael

Hi Michael, this is reminiscent of what I requested before about being able to work through a model where all the components have been drawn on one single layer/style (in my case every object was a foreign language) . If you recall i wanted a script that could go down the objects list and export them out one at a time with meshing density options. Here Sneather wants to be able to use the same functionality of having a script or command that will cycle through the objects either exporting ready for C4D or to just have the objcects named individually so they can then be imported into C4D and have their own mapping co-ordinates as individual parts rather one solid lump because of everything being on the same layer at export

Hope that makes it better to understand.

Martin

Hi Martin,



Ok, but I have explained how to do that above...

That information again is:

The script here will cycle through objects that have the same name and break them into having individual separate names:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3114.5

To use it, select everything and assign it all one name, then run the script and it will cycle through the objects as you are describing.

If it's not just object names that you want set up individually per object but also one separate style for each object (so that each object has its own individual material when importing into C4D as well as it's own object name), then do the process for separating out the names and then additionally run the script here which will set up one style for each named object:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3334.2


As far as I can tell those cover what you are describing - if those do not do what's needed then I'll need more detailed information.

- Michael

Well it's cool beans from me, they sure would have been handy when I was having fun pulling that model apart for export. As always top notch support

Martin

Hi Martin, sorry I didn't really know these would have helped you at that time, I guess I was focused on the part of your request about doing separate meshing settings for each individual object which is not covered by what I'm describing here.

The scripts listed here in this thread are also on Petr's page here in the "Browser" section:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/

- Michael

Hey Michael,

Sorry for making this topic hazier than it needs to be, and thanks for trying to help.
For now I'm moving on. I resorted to asking the engineer to re-export the file in a better way. So, I'm good on this job.

Cheers!