Licensing options for this format begin with FME Professional Edition.
Overview
The Autodesk 3ds Reader/Writer enables FME to read and write Autodesk® 3ds Format (3ds) files.
The 3ds format was originally developed as the native format for Autodesk 3D Studio (Releases 1 to 4). It is now commonly used as an interchange format between different 3D modeling and rendering applications.
Reader Overview
The 3ds Reader produces FME features for geometry data in an 3ds file.
The 3ds Reader extracts all the geometry in a 3ds file and then presents the elements one at a time to FME for further processing. Each 3ds element will create an FME feature.
Writer Overview
The 3D model has a hierarchical structure of Nodes, which are elements of the model.
For each node, there is a corresponding mesh, which contains the geometry of the object. Feature types become Nodes. Features become Meshes that may have geometries and attributes.
The 3ds Writer does not support feature type fanout.
Note: The 3ds format is limited to 32-bit precision for its coordinates and, as a result, translations involving a greater level of precision (i.e., using world coordinates instead of local coordinates) may produce 3ds data where different coordinates are collapsed into a single coordinate. You can resolve this issue by offsetting the x,y,z coordinates such that the model's origin is moved to (0,0,0) or another point close to this, which has the effect of moving the model into a local coordinate system.