Hello,

I'm trying to convince my company (…and myself) that houdini makes sense for an architecture firm over 3dstudio because it presents the opportunity for rapid generation of design iterations that static modeling simply does not. I realize that this question I'm about to ask is a long way from “rapid generation of design iterations” but here goes…

What is the most effective way to get a .dxf outline of a facade or floor plan to be a 3d model?

Any help is greatly appreciated,

A.

Houdini is a great tool but its support for reading cad files is a bit limited. The best supported file format at the moment for interchange cad files afaik is Iges, but since autocad doesn't handle it you are narrowed to dxf. Although even this approach is limited since there are some discrepancies in headers descriptions forcing autocad crash on import (This could be workaround though by parsing the files through 3rd party software). A recommended solution I found successful is Houdini<->Rhino<->Acad setup where Rhino was used primarily for files exchange and concept development (also incorporating grasshopper) and houdini for processing heavy geometry stuff (it is so much more flexible then Rhino, although lacks some rudimentary modeling operations).
I can't go into details at the moment, but by choosing Houdini you are facing a little bit of tools development at the start to iron out the pipeline workflow, but once you are there it is a nice enhancement to the design process. On the other hand changing people working habits could be a real challenge and a pain, especially where you switch to the tool where visual part takes only fraction of the screen, but that's a different story. Good luck.

Kuba, thanks for the detailed reply. Unfortunately our office doesn't have rhino (although I've seen the grasshopper rhino combination at another office and been tempted to investigate further) so the option of creating IGES files via rhino is not available.

Given that the dxfs give me a series of lines can anyone tell me how i might turn these lines into faces?

Guess the answer depends on the lines.

DXF/IGES conversion is an expensive and adventurous hobby. Writing a custom data converter sometimes is the best way to go.

aedal
Given that the dxfs give me a series of lines can anyone tell me how i might turn these lines into faces?

That's a huge topic, the shortest answer is triangulate2d but this will give you convex hull, so you need to build yourself a point in poligon test to remove outsie faces.
Another way is to use add sop and enable create polygon from points (dont remember right now the right naming) unfortunately this method won't work with most of dxfs since edges order is not taken into consideration.

Dxf is generally a messy format to work with imho. I don't know if you can export from your cad program to any other format? (Obj, FBX?) Else there is an option to invest some money in polytrans (http://www.okino.com/default.htm). [okino.com]