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topol - export geometry from Autocad to Polytrim/CLRview

What is topol:

Basic features of topol are:

• Makes complete translation of all hiding/shading entities from Autocad (and some more).
• Exports block locations as positions and block definitions as masters.
• Exports autocad views as eyepoints.
• Exports 3d-polylines as animation paths.
• Entities can be selected on screen for partial export.
• Entities will be sorted by one of the three criteria color, layer or insertion layer of blocks (toplayer) according to your choice. The sorting results in seperate files written for every layer or color. Floating layers and colors within blocks are fully supported.
  The screen color of autocad entities is not preserved in the output files.
• Only the entities that are visible (that is their layer is on and thawed) will be exported, even when nested in a selected block. This gives you another method of filtering elements of your drawing, especially usefull when you want to update only part of a scene.
• The layername or color number will be part of each respective filename to make it an unique identifier.
• You have full control through a sreen menu section, a text dialog or a interactive dialog box if you are running Autocad 12.

    Autocad entities:            CLRview/PolyTrim objects:

    - 3dfaces                    -  triangular or quadrilateral polys.
    - extruded or flat traces    -  triangular and/or quadrilateral polys.
    - extruded or flat solids    -  triangular and/or quadrilateral polys.
    - extruded or flat circles   -  rings and quadrilateral polys.
    - extruded arcs              -  quadrilateral polys.
    - extruded lines             -  quadrilateral polys.
    - extruded 2d-plines         -  quadrilateral polys.
    - wide 2d-plines             -  multilateral polys.
    - closed 2d-plines           -  multilateral polys.
    - 3d-meshes                  -  triangular or quadrilateral polys.
    - polyfaces                  -  triangular or quadrilateral polys.

the complete program consists of eight files:

    Program files:
        topol.lsp       Main program source file.
        esample.lsp     Entities sampling and conversion source file.
        vector.lsp      Geometrical utilities source file.
        topol.dcl       Dialog box definition file for Autocad 12.
        topol.mnu/x     Menu file for setup with Autocad 10/11/12.

    Additional Files: 
        manual.html     User manual. 
        README.txt      This file. 

History

Topol is a sideline (or was it the other way round?) of the Autocad to Radiance translator Torad. Torad was quite a success in the radiance user community, and has since been translated to C under the name Radout. Of course, the C version is much faster, and therefore torad (and equally topol) are not developed any further. In case anyone is really interested in a good and fast Autocad to CLRview/PolyTrim translator, I recommend to use the code base of radout, and adapt it to the raw polygon file format. The main difficulty in writing all those translators was in the geometry handling (unrolling nested blocks etc.), so the output adaptation can be considered a minor task.

"Support"

Georg Mischler

        Copyright © 1993 Georg Mischler

        Permission to use,  copy,  modify,  and distribute this software
        for any purpose and without fee is hereby granted, provided that
        the above  copyright  notice appears in all copies and that both
        that  copyright notice and this  permission notice appear in all
        supporting documentation.

        THIS  SOFTWARE  IS PROVIDED  "AS IS"  WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED
        WARRANTY.  ALL IMPLIED  WARRANTIES OF FITNESS FOR ANY PARTICULAR
        PURPOSE AND OF MERCHANTABILITY ARE HEREBY DISCLAIMED.