QUOTE(silk @ 09/03/05, 02:02 AM)
check your settings in
window > settings/prefrences > preferences
under settings you'll see a working units section with a linear option which can be set to various measurements (centimeter, meter, feet etc.), you can also change your grid scale in the grid options.
At the risk of incuring the maya modelling gods i'll say that maya doesn't really treat real world units very precisely. Just asume that 1 is one whatever and work relatively off of that. If you want real accuracy you'll need to use something like autocad or studio tools. (That said maya cloth is very picky about scale).
As for the illustrator scalling issues also check the options when you choose file import, there might be stuff there, the problem is that maya will change all those lovely beziers into nurbs curves so you might notice some of your sharp corners doing odd things.
If you do find a solution to this real world scale maya scale let me know.
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All good points and recommendations, thanks. I've done a bit more experimentation, and can report that the profiles built in Illustrator, with the units set to centimeters, remain precise within Illustrator and every other graphics app I have (Photoshop, GoLive, InDesign, etc.) Admittedly all Adobe, but I've also had Illustrator profiles work pretty precisely in Macromedia's old Extreme3D. Anyhow, When the finished profiles are all pooched up 229.5 percent and saved as either .ai or .eps, they import into Maya bang-on, and my rapid prototype vendor is happy.
The imported profiles appear at the world center, and the sharp corners stay sharp, fortunately. The conversion from NURBS to polys went great, after which I blew off the NURBS, smoothed the polys once, and saved the file for RP'ing. The curves, I'm told by my RP guys, have a very slight tendency to shrink in the conversion, so I'll first adjust the CVs if I have to. The resulting part came out great. I'm happy with the technique for now but will keep looking into improvements. My previous Maya instructor has told me that a fudge factor is nothing new; he's had to do similar things with Rhino.
Rick
