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Darksaber's X-Wing Station

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Please read the Disclaimer and Copyright.

Ok lets say you have finished making your model, for this example we will use the Naboo Base, now before saving your model to dxf, you have to do a few things, otherwise it will save as one bit mesh.

Presumably, while making your model you have made it bit by bit, i.e. main hull, wings, engines and so on, if not I will explain.

Once you have made you engine or what ever you realise it is in separate faces.

To join these in to one mesh, first select All for the tools bar

Next from the tools menu select tools/polygon mesh/join you engine piece should be in one mesh now

If you find there is something wrong with the mesh and you wish to alter it just select the mesh and press tools/polygon mesh/explode your mesh will be in separate face once again and you can now alter it.

If you have a model as one mesh select just the model and hide it, if you have used any control points or control lines to make you model then delete them.

Un-hide your model and go through the process as explained above by clicking on tools/polygon mesh/explode, select the faces you wise to make in to one mesh and hide them.

Once you have hidden all the faces for the one mesh, select all the model, then right click on the hide button then left click on the hide button so that the you hide the selected model parts but you are left with the faces you wish to join.

Do this for all the parts until you have all the pieces in there own mesh.

Now you want to set the meshes to different parts so at the bottom of the screen you will see this: -

It might be called something else, but anyhow with your mouse right click on it and this box will appear: -

You will see that there is a tick next to the Default, at the moment all the meshes are set to Default, if you save now, and reopen the model will be in one mesh. The Naboo base has 10 parts to it so press on the new bow 10 times as so: -

Now you will notice that rhino names them Layer 05, Layer 06, Layer 07 but for Ace these have to be renamed, so select Layer 05 from the name box and rename this to Mesh0 do this for all so it now looks like this: -

Next if you have a large model with quite a few meshes, it then starts to get a bit confusing when the colour of the meshes are all black so on the colour box click on Mesh9

A colour chart will appear, what I usually do is select the red then work downwards on the colour chat while working upward on the Meshes. So now your box should look like this: -

Before pressing OK, click tick box as shown above then press Ok.

Now to start changing your meshes, so select the mesh you wish to change.

(A small tip is to start from the engines, then wings main body parts guns and finish on the canopy or cockpit. By doing this when it come to opening it in Ace Mesh0 will become the canopy, as Ace reverses the order you named the meshes so for the sake of better words, start from the back and work forward if you where to start with the canopy still naming it Mesh0 this would the become Mesh9 in Ace, which you don't want).

Ok no to start, select the one of the engines, next on the tools menu click on Edit/Layers/Change Object Layer and this box will appear: -

Select Mesh9 and press OK, next select the other engine, next click on you right mouse button and the layer of Object box should appear, if not repeat the previous steps, select Mesh8 Repeat this until all the meshes in you model have a different colour like this: -

So the order of the meshes should be like this: -

Before you save your model, there is still one thing to do, right click on the this box again.

And from the show menu select empty layers like this: -

Next click on Select All then click on Delete. click on the show menu again and select All layers it will now
look like this: -

Click on OK, now you should be able to save as a DXF, From the files menu select Save As, Select Dxf and select the name you wish to save you model as.

This box will appear copy the same setting as shown, then press OK. (These setting will now remain as the default setting for each time you save).

Before closing Rhino open another Rhino screen then open your saved model to check whether it has saved Ok and not in one mesh, by opening another screen you can still go back to the previous screen and correct any errors you might have made.