3DS Import for Alibre Design is a 3D Studio® (.3ds) file import add-on for Alibre Design®. This add-on gives Alibre Design the ability to import mesh data from 3D Studio 3DS files.
3DS Import for Alibre Design reads polygon mesh data stored in 3DS files and imports it into Alibre Design. A polygon mesh in a 3DS file is comprised of a set of triangular faces. 3DS Import for Alibre Design creates trimmed planar surfaces for each triangle and knits them together to create a solid body.
3DS Import for Alibre Design is very easy to use as it adds new commands to Alibre Design. It also adds a submenu to the Alibre Design menu called "3DSImport" which houses these newly added commands.
The '3DS Import for Alibre Design' menu consists of the following commands:
# Import - Import to a 3DS file
# Help - Display the 3DS Import for Alibre Design help file
# Register - Register your copy of 3DS Import for Alibre Design
# About - Display the 3DS Import for Alibre Design About box
The 3DS File Format
The 3DS file format is the native file format of 3D Studio. 3D Studio has now been replaced by 3ds Max whose native file format has a .max file extension. However, 3ds Max is still able to read and write .3ds files. 3ds Max is one of the most widely-used off the shelf 3D animation programs. It has strong modeling capabilities, a flexible plug-in architecture and a long heritage on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is mostly used by video game developers, TV commercial studios and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization.