Unfortunately scatter doesnt have a "keep apart" feature. To answer the first part of your question, you can make a selection and check the box "selected faces only" in the scatter. But to get them to not intersect you will either need to manually move them by collapsing the scatter and selecting them as elements then moving them around. Or you could try using particle flow to distribute the objects. If you use a shape instance operator, zero speed so they don't move away from the surface, and a keep apart operator to avoid the intersections.
you could even have the shape instance randomly produce different things by attaching the two objects and selecting object elements in the shape instance operator.

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Tyson knows his stuff. I didn't even think of using pflow. Gonna add that one to the bag of tricks.

Convert your cell wall to an editable poly before you do the compound. Then do your compound and select the distribution operand and select the correct faces. Then check the selected faces only. You may also want to hide the distribution object.

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--Matt

Greetings!

Thanks for taking the time to respond guys.

I shall have a bash at using particle flow to distribute my lipid and cholesterol moieties as you suggest. I wonder though will particle flow distribute object in relation to a cylinder (or rather arch) such that they are both translated and rotated (in relation to the arch). I attempted to use the crowd tool to this end, unfortunately the scattered objects were only translated in relation to the arch (i.e. they were parallel to one another as opposed to perpendicular to the arch surface) which is less than desirable.

I have toyed with the idea of manually moving each cholesterol moiety individually. There are a manageable number of these moieties so it's definitely achievable. I haven't however figured out how to collapse the scatter and select each instance separately, I'd appreciate detailed instructions to this end if possible (forgive my utter ignorance).

As for using the selected faces only option within the scatter compound tool. I have attempted this before, but for some reason I am unable to select individual faces of the arch poly (which I previously referred to as a cylinder surface). I will play around with this a little more however and see what I can do, but for now this issue is on the back burner (in relation to the above issue regarding collisions/intersections).

Regards,

Nubey.

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Try converting the compound object to editable poly and then use the element select in the same way you would select and edge or face. Then detatch the element to a new object.

How many is mangeable?

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Ah, thanks VarnishedOtter. I'll give that a try. To answer your question I have about 100 cholesterol moieties to 400 lipid moieties, but only a small fraction of those are colliding so the manual approach is valid.

At the moment I'm experimenting with a third-party scatter plug-in which includes some degree of collision detection and prevention. It's not perfect as the bounding area for each object (re: collision detection) seems a little large but it does allow me to scatter multiple objects (i.e. both lipid and cholesterol moieties) with collision avoidance enabled.

If anybodies interested the above plug-in (which is freeware/charityware by the way) can be downloaded from [Link to www.max3dstuff.com]

Regards,

Nubey.

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Thanks for sharing the link lee. I do alot of work with scatter so it may come in handy for me.

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Hi Matt.

I'm actually having some success with the plug-in by tweaking fail limit and increasing the depth of the distribution arch. Any sparseness will be imperceivable due to the fact that I plan on rendering a front-on view (a lucky coincidence). I just hope I have enough memory to render the bleeder; 3DS Max has proven remarkably unreliable (for me) in that arena.

Oh, that reminds me I've also been having some issues with opening *.max scenes within which I have previously imported a *.iges model. Typically I will create a model using Solid Edge and export it to *.iges format. I will then import this *.iges model into a 3DS Max scene for rendering. This works well, and I am indeed able to render the scene, except that when I come to reopen the *.max file 3DS Max 2010 crashes with an error message stating that it was unable to open said file.

I know that the simplest solution would be to do ALL of my modelling within 3DS Max, but I do find Solid Edge more appropriate for certain tasks. Any ideas on this one? Note that I'll probably repost this as a separate thread when I get the opportunity.

Regards,

Nubey.

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Sounds like it could be that your meshes are corrupted due to some anomalies in the export/import of that format. That could also explain stablilty issues when rendering aswell. You could try the stl checker modifier that will find things like double faces, multiple and open edges etc.. things that would be unwanted if you were exporting to stereo lithography files for rapid prototyping. Like you say for maximum stablilty build your models in max. or try other export formats.

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