Hey everyone, I've been having a devil of a time with the DXF's that export out of Revit when trying to convert/import them into other 3D applications. I have no idea why, but there tend to be problems. These DXF's will open just fine in other Autodesk apps, but for example they consistently crash Blender, CNC-Toolpath generators, or older DXF conversion tools. My guess is it has something to do with the importers for these other 3D programs not understanding all that xData or something that Revit puts in there, but this is at best a guess. Could also be that Revit DXF's are 2000/2004, and these systems were based upon a more generic DXF standard (heh 'standard'. in the 3D world. I made a funny).
So, if I first open these DXF's in AutoCAD, and save them back down, I can then commonly pull them into Blender without issue. Funny that. I can also export them out to 3DS as well, but not terribly well, for there isn't much control there over the faceting and triangulation that occurs on the smooth solids. And using a multi-thousand dollar CAD program to simply convert a 3D file is more than a little silly.
OK, so I want to hear what 3D file converters y'all have had good luck with out there. There are many of them, so I'm hoping for a little real-world advice towards a good one. I need a way to take something out of Revit and turn it into either a decent 3DS file, a nice DXF, or a STL. Anyone got any tips?