Autodesk Does Something Right - Wildcards

[TheAllusionist]

I love being pleasantly surprised and Max 2008 has done it. Of course I could be wrong and this feature may have been available in earlier versions, but I was unaware of it. Here it is, in the object/layer manager (Select by Name) has search features like AutoCad now.

So lets say you have a school campus and seven buildings and when you bring in a CAD drawing from ADT or Revit there are hundreds or thousands of blocks for wall, window, door, railing, stairs............ assemblies. Before the work flow was unacceptable, who could deal with it all, it took for ever to goo through the mile long list of layer/objects, now you can use wildcards in your search. In case you don't know about wildcards, they come from the good old DOS days, you could use "?" for any single character and "*" for any amount of characters. So Delete *.* would delete every file (Every File Name.Every File Extension)

So all the buildings in your complex have similar walls with a base and a top and trim and cornice.......... Now you type in the search box using wildcards "*wall*base*" and all the layer/objects that have wall and base in their name are selected! I am stoked by the hours of potential time savings this creates and just the fact that BIM type models are now usable, sure you could argue that they were usable before, but I would argue that life was too short to spend hours selecting items that you couldn't even group once they were selected.

Well I will be the first to gripe about Autodesk when I feel they have done something wrong, so I try to always give kudos when I feel they do something right Of course, how long has AutoCAD had this search feature? But I digress.............

[hoppergrass]

I have been doing this as far back as I can remeamber, problably since version2.5 which is when I first started with Max , cant remeamber if I could do it in 3DS Dos though

JHV

[TheAllusionist]

The interface wasn't the same and didn't list like it does now, copying AutoCad as it were. I am not saying wild cards are new, just the interface and how it is implemented. Infact wildcards are a CPM and DOS legacy feature. It is a lot easier to deal with blocks and family assemblies from Revit and ADT now

[d.sign]

I think you mean on the new feature that is actually incorporated only in ADT, not standard autocad, feature is called select similar... in ADT you just right-click and you get the feature in drop down list... very usefull for cleaning up the mess of large projects... as you said.
I have read in the first reviews of max 2008 that it has that feature... I do not have 2008, but I presume it is somehow incorporated in interface... you select one object, hit select similar and you get them all selected... just like in good old ADT...
But in this place I would like to add that I usually clear up the mess in ADT before going into Max... it is still better... model could get heavy and Max do not need any extra objects to make it even heavier.
Cause every line, point or any other object from Cad that is light like a feather in original app, when brought in Max it has all the damn parameters as any mesh or other type of object... so 100 000 lines is like you have 100 000 objects with 100 000 sets of parameters and it makes file much biger and much heavier...

[TheAllusionist]

You would think Autodesk's software would play nicely with one another. I hear from beta testers that the new Revit integration is better That is all they can say

[d.sign]

But they do play nice together... just that Autodesk do not care to overcome such problems which are in Max code I believe... while Auto Cad can handle infinite number of lines, blocks and so, Max operate with objects, polygons and parameters and does not see difference between line, point of mesh when it comes to number of parameters...
However, there are now more options to import Auto Cad drawings and I am not sure if there is maybe option to overcome this... I pretty much stick to the method I developed, which would say - let each software do what it does best...

[d.sign]

Russell, buddy,
Being critical about something is attitude that make things go forward and change to the better. Without criticism, all human activities would be corrupted beyond recognition...
However, you are on the thin ice here.
I understand your frustration.
Believe it or not, I was long in ADT before going to archviz business completely. I did large scale projects (for one man at least) for competitions and other purposes, like hotel extensions, big swimming pool sport centers, large museums and so. All done in ADT in 3d, for dual purpose - getting project documentation and making presentational images...
Way back than there was a Viz render which would link the .dwg and you had no problem with handling large scale object. I know BIM is different issue, but AEC was great thing IMHO... however, you would not be able to really edit anything inside of Viz, except the light and perhaps materials...
To cut to the chase, there are two areas of this job which are closely connected, but still separated
1. the project and making the project documentation
2. archviz and making images for archviz
To make really high end archviz, you would have to make adjusted model, not to use the revit, not adt model as they are in their native apps... It is simply not logical from aspect of rendering.
There are couple of simple laws for rendering high end archviz and they are old, but still standing although computers are gone long way.
- you make only what you really need to shaw...
- make the geometry as light as possible, which assume even to make only one side polygons for large scale projects... i.e. no need to cap the walls up and down or so...To simulate real world enviroment you need to make special effects which alone make the scene heavy, so the architectural model should be stripped down to minimum
- make the scene as simple as possible, with as few objects as possible, make it well organized and so on...
To avoid repeating myself, I would conclude that for large scale projects you better use the adopted version of model or even make it from scratch... however time consuming that may be...
Skilled modeler would make it fast or make fast adjustment of imported geometry...
In this place I must say again that AEC objects imported in max come in as meshes and I never had problems handling them... but now I like more to make the polys within Max...
Bottom line is, Max, as big as it is, with all the powerfull options inside it (biggest advantage is possibility to use linework for modeling directly, by extruding and so on...)
it is still based on polygons... Any type of object is converted in the polygon in rendering process... so it all comes down to that, how many polygons you have in the scene...
Now, you have the vray proxy thing which is great, but if you bring in the model with 1 million beams or chairs or doors, nothing you can do about it... while if you are modeling it, you would make one and convert to proxy and than instance it all over...
What I am trying to say here is that I understand your position, I been there myself in a way... but you will never have good enough software of powerfull enough computer to do this easy way, or to do two things at once...
Now you can render the thing in AutoCad, where you make it or you can bring it to Max and remake it for rendering... The logic of the specialisation is like that...
It is getting better in each version of Max, but still not there where you want it... I wonder when it will...
On one side you have tendency for unifying, on the other there is tendency for specializing...

[TheAllusionist]

Eliminating all my long winded and opinionated post, just to show that it could be done, just not by Autodesk apparently:

NPOWER Software

Once again I rest my case.