A long time ago in a parallel universe I worked with 3D Studio R2 (ie dos software) and completed a number of projects with it. (I still own it, though not the 486 computer that ran it)
I can still open those files in rhino and other software, but there was another format you could save out of 3D Studio called .prj.
I can’t now exactly recall what that was used for; I think it saved animation data and maybe scene data.
Anyway, the trick was that in order to open these files in another program, you just renamed the file extension to .3ds, and the other program would be able to read the entities it supported.
I still have occasion to reference those original files, and up until V5 rhino could open those renamed files; however, starting with V6 rhino declined to open them, as does V7 and now V8.
If its not a major drama, could I request that the .3DS importer was tweaked to once again allow the opening of these renamed files?
FIXED
Hi Rabbit, good news for you. I had the same problem, in middle 90 for few years I was working with 3D Studio saving all the file in prj extension and cannot open anymore. pity, a lot of interesting products I made a that time and still usable, so after try find online, with no success, any possible answer I just renamed the extension from prj to 3ds, import in Rhino and magically everything appear as left 30 years ago… hope will work for you!
Sure - thanks Dale.
The .prj file, and a screen grab of it in sketchup & rhino 5, once renamed as .3ds
One thing I just noticed when looking at a few files is that rhino 5 refuses to open them after about 5 or 6; I have to close and restart it, when its good for another 5 or 6…
I didn’t have any luck with the other two files. Oddly, both the plug-in that comes with Rhino and the plug-in I posted both use file I/O libraries from Autodesk.
