selecting objects instead of surfaces?

# 1 26-05-2011 , 03:44 PM

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I'm saving a solidworks assembly model as an iges file to work with it in maya for rendering purposes. I'm in the basic steps of learning the software, trying to figure out how to render well, do materials, etc. Everything is coming along decently, but I'm having some trouble selecting objects on my model. If I click anywhere, it grabs the surface I click, and if there is a similar one it seems to "highlight" it as well, but if I apply material it only hits the surface that I clicked. I actually would like to be able to grab an entire part instead of just the surface of the part in some situations. Is this possible? Also, if there is like 100 of the part, it would be cool if I could apply material to all of those parts at once instead of having to click each individual part. Right now I just need to see if there is a way to grab the whole part. Below is an image showing a very basic rendered model, if you look at the yellow you can see where I try to apply material to the part but am only getting individual surfaces at a time.

user added image

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# 2 26-05-2011 , 06:34 PM

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If you high light the small part then with the shift key held select the larger part then press "P" this will perant the small part to the larger one, now if you select the large part the small part will also be selected, also look into groupping objects............dave

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# 3 26-05-2011 , 06:53 PM

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Yeah but if you look at this example, that finger has like 50 surfaces, I didn't do the whole thing yellow as just to show an example. It'll be a huge pain in the ass to have to click every surface for every one of those fingers. I mean if that's all I can do, I guess I'll have to do it but O.O that's gonna suck lol

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# 4 26-05-2011 , 06:56 PM

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Are these NURBS surfaces? Is there any naming convention for the components? What does your outliner look like?

-stwert

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# 5 26-05-2011 , 07:37 PM

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Are these NURBS surfaces?
Yes

Is there any naming convention for the components?
In solidworks, everything does have some sort of name but it doesn't seem to export with the iges file type. I may not know how to check that though.

What does your outliner look like?
I think you're asking me what it looks like when I click a surface in maya? If so I am giving you some images below.

I'll give you a few screen shots to show you what I'm dealing with, including my export settings from solidworks.

This image shows where I have clicked to select several surfaces, I've used shift to do so. I was clicking on the finger to the right and it selects surfaces across all of the fingers.
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This image shows what I get when I "assign material to selection". (I accidentally deselected my surfaces so the selection is slightly different in the images but its the same general idea)
user added image

This image shows my solidworks settings when I save as an iges. Also, to the left of the save settings you can see some of the parts from the solidworks assembly, as how they are named and whatnot.. you may or may not want to see that.
user added image

Thanks for taking the time to try and help me user added image

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# 6 26-05-2011 , 07:40 PM

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Actually the outliner is a maya window that lists all the objects and things and how they're arranged in hierarchies. I think Window > Outliner (but it may be in a submenu). The reason I was asking about the naming is if the surfaces are named differently you may be able to select all the surfaces of one kind using wildcards etc. You can also select whole hierarchies, which may be helpful.

-stwert

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# 7 26-05-2011 , 07:54 PM

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Ohhh cool! I loaded up another model just to try with and I opened the outliner like you said. I can click on a part and it kind of highlights it in the outliner and it makes it a lot easier to be able to find and select the whole part instead of just the surfaces individually. One last thing, the main names in the outliner seem to be a generic: "ig_singularsubfigureinstance####" but when I click the plus sign I get my actual part number under it:

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Is there a way for me to actually grab all the parts that are say BPE_1323? (in this example above there would be 8 of them, the other sections have different numbers in the dropdown)

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# 8 26-05-2011 , 07:58 PM

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Yes, I don't have maya here, so I can't grab a screenshot, but in the upper right part of the interface, in the "status line" there's an input box that has a few options, selection, renaming, and transforming I believe. If you choose the selection option you can type in BPE_1323 and it should select everything with that name. Or you can be fancy and do things like BPE_* and it will select all BPE_#### parts.

-stwert

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# 9 26-05-2011 , 08:05 PM

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Here's a bit of a success image!
user added image

I don't see the "status line" you are talking about, but I am leaving for the day and will look for it a little bit more in the morning. Thanks a lot!

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