Comments on: QuickCollapse.ms

By: jinj

jinj — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 15:19:17 +0000

hi, i want to use your script.. i’m a nurbs modeller and use body objects and nurbs.
well could you add the ability to collapse such kind to their own kind instead to convert them to editable mesh?
also how to collapse them all without to join or grouping them all?
thank you and happy new year

By: BruceLeroy

BruceLeroy — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:42:40 +0000

My scene geometry is coming from Revit by way of DWG. Each object is written out as an Acad block and comes into 3dsMax as a mesh object linked to an empty parent object.
I tried to filter my selection with both the display floater and the selection filter but both of them include the empty parent object and that’s what seems to cause the error. How do you work around this?

By: BruceLeroy

BruceLeroy — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 03:57:40 +0000

Dave, thanks so much for the quick response. I got caught up in a project and only just now had the opportunity to check back. So I’m getting the error ’cause I’ve got non-collapsible elements selected – makes sense. Does that include those invisible objects that come in when you import a model from Revit? Is that what you mean by group heads? My process now is to manually select by layer, run the collapse utility, then turn off the object and delete all the invisible stuff left over. Sounds like you’ve got this whole process w/ geometry cleaning already automated. I’d like to write a similar script but I’m just getting started with maxscript. Any tips would be greatly appreciated and thanks for all your help so far!

By: Dave Buchhofer

Dave Buchhofer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:33:39 +0000

an eaaasy/quick way to filter out the un-collapseable objects, is to shut them off by category with the Display Floater

By: Dave Buchhofer

Dave Buchhofer — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 20:32:32 +0000

Bruce, hi, yea, that was exactly the impetus for making it, This is the ‘generic’ library that i load into various other scripts, my collapse by layer script simply selects all objects on a layer, then runs this!

I’ve found most of the errors that pop up are due to the lack of error checking for various things that aren’t easily collapsed to Editable Meshes, Dummys, Cameras, helpers, group heads, etc.

I’ve since expanded this to an interface with various other helper scripts for general mesh cleanup (Weld all, Delete isolated verts, collapse to individual meshes, collapse to 1 mesh, collapse by layer, etc.)

Someday soon I hope to clean it up and package it somewhat. I really only haven’t thus far since it includes a few parts of other peoples useful scripts and i haven’t taken the time to check with them yet.

By: BruceLeroy

BruceLeroy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:20:37 +0000

Just ran this script with Max2010 and got an error. It’s opening the script in the editor and highlighting the line “meshop.attach b arr[index]” Any ideas?
Is it possible to modify your script to automatically go through a max file and automatically collapse by layer? It would make the transition between Revit and Max a little less painful.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:05:09 +0000

Okay, it was a personal problem

It was trying to save through the network instead of directly to the hard drive.

Everything looks to work perfectly – now if I can figure out what to add to delete all the originals automatically.

Thanks

By: Dave Buchhofer

Dave Buchhofer — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:21:05 +0000

that’s a new one to me, I’ve yet to run into any issues saving. I haven’t had a change to try out the union version though, maybe you can sidestep the issue by exporting instead? or possibly try the Reset Xform, Convert to Mesh tricks.

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:04:15 +0000

Strange, after running this script, I can’t save. It keeps freezing when I try to save. This last time I fiddled with the object a bit before trying to save. The fiddling went fine? I did notice, that the objects were not deleted, I had 1000 spheres to start, then at the end I still had those thousand spheres + like 32 objects(from the first pass) and another like 9 objects, and then the one big one. I tried deleting the other objects and I have what I want – just can’t save it ??

By: Shawn

Shawn — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:06:00 +0000

Got it.

Thanks, you’ve been a big help! It does work.

( b + arr[i] ) instead of ( meshop.attach b arr[i] )

Thanks again!