Hello, I just need to convert some .dwg 3D files to .dae or .skp files and I can made this in Rhino, but unfortunately I cant do the same in MoI. Any chance to see support for DWG import in MoI v4?

P.S. Or know somebody a good .dwg to .dae converter.... because until now the cheapest solution that actually works is Rhino... and I need to convert in future a lot from .dwg.

Hi artisanicview, sorry it's not likely that MoI v4 will support DWG import.

There are a few reasons why - one is that the DWG format itself is not easy to work with, it's not documented and deliberately obfuscated by Autodesk to try and make it difficult for other programs to use it. So the only real way to use it is to license libraries that are kind of expensive.

The another big problem is that often times the 3D model data in a DWG file is in the form of faceted polygon models, not NURBS solids like MoI is designed to work with.

The other formats that you are mentioning, DAE and SKP are also polygon mesh formats, not NURBS formats. It's difficult for MoI to import those kinds of files because MoI is designed to work with NURBS data at modeling time, MoI is not designed to work with polygon mesh data for modeling.

DWG files can contain a lot of different kinds of data in it - it's possible for DWG to contain 2D drafting entities like lines and circles, or faceted polygon mesh geometry or also encrypted ACIS NURBS solids. Often times a program that imports DWG may only focus on some subset of these so that's something to watch out for.

I don't myself know what would be a good converter from DWG to DAE, you might take a look at ViaCAD, or something like ZWCad or TurboCAD. You might try something like ViaCAD for DWG to OBJ, then find an OBJ to DAE mesh only converter, like http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/ .

- Michael