From: ocean@sn.no (Knut A. Nilsen)
Subject: Re: TECH: Problems converting dxf2wrl
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 13:17:05 GMT
Message-ID: <4fncn7$t6o@hasle.sn.no>
Organization: Oceaneering A/S


From: ocean@sn.no (Knut A. Nilsen)

Simon,

I've been trying the same for a while - I want to get from DGN to
OpenInventor (which is essentially the same as VRML). My experience is
that WCVT2POV does not understand all the elements of DXF (who does?),
only 3DFaces and 3D poly-meshes will be imported. The DGN to DXF
filter in Microstation, however, seems to export in another way.
Experimenting with the settings in the DGNtoDXF filter has given me
better, but not good enough, results. Most of the time, I just get a
strange "heap" of polygons.

There is another program, called GLView, which I think can be found at
http://www.snafu.de/~hg , which seems to have a better DXF converion
filter. However, it's not freeware (I think he wants $50 for it), and
the demo version I have tested will not convert big models.

Anyway, I can't get optimal results with GLView either, there's always
something missing or misplaced. The funny thing is that I tested some
of the smaller DXF files with GLView and WorldToolKit for Windows, and
I got the same errors. This has made me suspect that there's a bug in
Microstation's DXF filter. However, I don't know anything about the
"interior" of DXF, so I can't verify this...

So far, the best results I've got is with SGI's DGNtoIV filter (you
can easily change an IV 2.0 file to VRML 1.0 by changing the header
from "#Inventor V2.0 ascii" to "#VRML V1.0 ascii"), but you need an
SGI machine to run this. If anyone have a better converter which runs
on a PC or has ported the DGNtoIV filter, please let me know.....

Knut Nilsen, Norway
ocean@sn.no