I saw a linkn to MoI on a machining website many weeks ago. I got around to downloading it and tryign it out and it seems very impressive. I have done some 3d mechanical models in programs such as Inventor and SolidWorks which I think are both very useful for there purpose. I have even tried some programs such as Blender and spent may hours just trying to figure out how to do very simple things, when in the end I was not really wanting to render movies (animations) but objects.

So MoI, seems to fit this need. Basically I am looking for a way to create objects to be machined on a small woodcarving machine that I have ( www.carvewright.com). The hitch is that the current software available for the machine will only import height-maps (level of grey determins Z coord), and being new to this type of 3d work I'm not sure how (or if) MoI can be made to render a height-map. Perhaps it would need to be a two step (program) process, but I'm hoping to do it all within MoI. Any help/pointers would be greatly appriciated.

Thanks,

Jeff