Autodesk Inventor 3ds

Thanks to my teacher, I now have a free copy (for a year) of Autodesk inventor. Through the same site, I can get 6 months of 3ds max, but i am much more experienced with inventor. Is it possible to create 3DS files from inventor? If not, can it be made compatible with 3ds Max and then exported?

There ought to be an export option for *.3ds, though it may be a plug-in. That feature is fairly standard on that line of software. Of course, Inventor probably won't be able to texture the model, so you'd be better off learning how to use 3ds Max. Check the help files for details...

I have done it before. I think you're going to have to use something like Blender or Anim8or for the textures, though. Export the .ipt file to .stl and import that into Blender to export to .3ds

Is blender free? And where can i get it?

Edit:

Ok i got blender, and I imported a file, but when i go to export it to 3ds, it says it requires a full python installation. Where can I get python?

I hate to be the guy to state the obvious, but: http://www.python.org/download/

I didn't even need to Google it!

Lol, i didnt realize it was its own site, i thought it might be hidden somewhere in the blender site. Thanks

Edit:
Ok, im not sure what to do. What does python even do? It didnt change anything in blender. Help!

Python is an open source programming language. Blender's source code was written in Python, and some of the features might only work with newer versions of Python.

So can anyone tell me what to do? I'm clueless.

Inventor:
File/Save Copy As/.stl

Blender:
File/import/STL
Add textures (I'm not sure how to do this part.)
File/export/.3ds

[gouldy]

I can't believe how obvious this is. I never ever thought about just exporting as an .stl to another program. Inventor doesn't have the ability to export directly as 3ds without buying furhter pluggins and this has always blighted me. I can't believe how OBVIOUS that is and I didn't think of it .

btw, musicmonkey, what release of Inventor is it that you've got?

nannerdw, that dosent help. I already knew that.

The problem is that Blender dosent recognize that in installed python, so i still can export to 3ds from blender. Everything else works.

Im running Inventor 2010 Pro.

[gouldy]

Sweet. My business is run basically around the use of Inventor and even though this is the case, we're still running 2008, boo.

ok, but seriously, can someone help me?

Does Blender give you an error message, or does the .3ds file make Nolimits crash?

Let me say it AGAIN. I import the file into blender, and when i go to export it to 3ds, it says it requires a full installation of Python. I installed python, so i dont know what the problem is.

Uninstall both programs, install Python then Blender, would be my guess.

Originally posted by musicmonkey

Let me say it AGAIN.

Don't get worked up. People are trying to help.

Which version of Python did you install? The current version of Blender should be more stable with Python 2.6.4 than with the newer 3.1.1 version

I'll try that and get back to you. Thanks