Importing AutoCAD Objects into 3D Max results in poor quality content

[Matt.Gordon]

hi all, I'm having trouble exporting and importing files from autocad to 3ds max, the file will import but its all jagged, none of the lines are smooth and it gives the mesh thousands more polygons than it needs also it shrinks the mesh down so tiny that 3d max freaks out.
what am i doing wrong?
i think it has something to do with the exporting but I'm not sure what.
i work for an urban development company so i get given the cad files from the engineers and none of them know what to do as they dont use 3d max.
any help would be great.

[Steve_Bennett]

What field are you working in? Civil?

You need to know what units the file in AutoCAD is set to (or civil 3d or whatever they are using). Then you need to set your scene units in MAX to match those of the drawing first before importing. Then on import you need to go thru the setting to determine what MAX is going to do with the imported geometry. The help file in MAX is pretty good about explaining what the import box does and the settings and what they do.

[Matt.Gordon]

yeah civil.

the drafter that i got the file off has modeled the file in 12D and then imported that into autoCAD, its really strange that it looks fine in autocad and then freaks out when i bring it into max.
I'm thinking it might have something to do with putting it into autoCAD after having it in 12D,
something tells me that you don't need to put it into cad before max.

[Steve_Bennett]

yeah civil.

the drafter that i got the file off has modeled the file in 12D and then imported that into autoCAD, its really strange that it looks fine in autocad and then freaks out when i bring it into max.
I'm thinking it might have something to do with putting it into autoCAD after having it in 12D,
something tells me that you don't need to put it into cad before max.

Once imported into acad, bring that geometry as close to 0,0,0 as possible - center it if needed, then import it into max.

acad and max have this thing where geometry needs to be close to 0,0,0 or things go crazy.