8

566 Chapter 20: Managing Scenes and Projects
is large. Avoid selecting all surfaces and then
clicking Make Independent. Rather, save your
file immediately after successfully importing it,
and then use Make Independent with care.
Future Compatibility
The group that maintains and updates the IGES
standard, the IGES/PDES (Product Data Exchange
Standard) consortium, attempts to keep IGES
upwardly compatible. It ’s likely that files generated
bythesoftwarewillbecompatiblewithfuture
versions of IGES.
Histor y of IGES
The first version of IGES was developed in 1980
in response to demands from government and
industry for a neutral file format. In 1981, IGES
wasapprovedasanANSIstandard. Sincethen,
many enhancements have been made, including
the significant additions listed in the following
table.
IGES
version
Date
Added f eatures
1.0 1980
Mechanical 2D and 3D drawings
2.0 1983
Sculptured sur faces, rational B-splines,
finite elements, and electrical drawings
3.0 1986
Manufacturing AEC (architec ture,
engineering, and construction), and
piping drawings
4.0 1988
CSG (constructive solid geometry)
solids
5.0 1990
Primarily consolidation and
rationalization of existing formats
to improve the quality and robustness
of existing entities
5.1 1991
Boundar y-representational (B-rep)
solids
IGES
version
Date
Added fea tures
5.2 1993
European character set and several
clarifications; published as an ANSI
standard
5.3 1996
UnboundedLines(110:1and110:2),
several new Properties (406), and
further clarifications. Year 2000
compliance
See also
3ds Max to IGES Expor t Table (page 3–570)
Exporting IGES Files (page 3–569)
IGES Log Files (p age 3–566)
IGES to 3ds Max Impor t Table (page 3–568)
Importing IGES Files (page 3–567)
IGES Log Files
During t he tra nslat ion process, the software creates
log files containing detailed information about
the processing of the model. This information
includes error messages and entity-mapping
statistics. You can use this log file to understand
what occurred during the translation.
Thesoftwareplaceslogfilesinthedirectorywhere
theIGESfileiseitherimportedfromorexported
to. Thelogfilenamehastheprefixnameofthe
3ds Max file name, with the extension of .
xli
(input) for import, and . xlo (output) for export.
The log file provides the following information:
• Name of the file processed.
• Number and severity of errors encountered,
a description of them, and an explanation of
what can be done, or what was done to the data
in error. (The software attempts to fix many
errors itself.)
• Summary of entities processed.