Home > Supported File Formats > PTC Creo/View to 3D Studio

How to convert PTC Creo/View (ProductView,.pvs,.pvz,.ol) to 3D Studio (.3ds)?

PolyTrans|CAD+DCC performs mathematically precise CAD, DCC/Animation, GIS and BIM 3D file conversions into all key downstream 3D packages and file formats. Okino software is used and trusted throughout the world by many tens of thousands of 3D professionals in mission & production critical environments, backed by respectable personal support directly from our core development team.

PTC Creo/View

ProductView, now Creo Elements/View, is a 3D visualization tool developed by PTC. PTC is also known for their other software packages such as Creo Elements/Pro (previously known as Pro/Engineer) and Creo Elements/Direct (previously known as CoCreate).

For over 3 decades Okino has been a primary conversion partner of PTC, especially for our core business focussing on the conversion of PTC's native ProE/Creo (ASM and PRT) and ProductView (PVS, PVZ, OL) files.

Okino licenses the real and actual ProE/Creo runtime toolkits from PTC directly and hence provides the functionality to import native ProductView .PVS, .PVZ and .OL files.

3D Studio

The .3ds file format was the native file format of the old Autodesk '3D Studio R1-R4' software, which was popular up to about 1996 before its successor (3ds Max) replaced it. The file format is a dated, 16-bit, obsolete format. It is limited to triangle geometry, 65536 polygons per mesh, no vertex normals for accurate smoothing, 8.3 DOS filename naming and a maximum of 10 characters for object names.

Please do not confuse the .3ds format with the 3ds Max .max format. You will find throughout the 3D industry that some companies refer to .3ds as the "3ds Max file format" but this is not true. The native file format of 3ds Max is the .max format, whereas .3ds is just a legacy import/export file format ported over to 3ds Max by Tom Hudson during the transition from 3D Studio R4 back in the early 1990s. DO NOT use the .3ds file format to convert to/from 3ds Max but rather use Okino's dedicated PolyTrans-for-3dsMax plug-in system for 3ds Max.

PTC Creo/View import converter's overview

3D Studio export converter's overview