In this blog, you will learn all about how to save and import files in 3Ds Max. The first thing you should know is how to create a file. When you open up 3Ds Max, a file is already created for you. But if you want to start fresh you can simply go to file > New > New All, and now you have a fresh file.
Open
The next thing you should know is how to open up a file. When you go into 3Ds Max, go to File > Open/ Open Recent and it will show you all your recent projects.
Save
Now if you start 3D modelling by adding shapes and you want to save your work, you can go to File > Save as and locate where you want to save the file to, give it a name and then press save.
You can also press File > Save/ Ctrl+S to update the current file you are working on.
You can also go to File > Save copy as – what this does is it saves your file as a separate name and in a separate location. This is helpful when you are working on a big project and you are about to do something that might mess up your work. So you can save it as a copy, as a safe backup and if you need to go back to it you have it saved.
The next option is very helpful, so if you have quite a few objects in your scene, you can go to File > Save Selected. As you can tell from the name, it saves the selected objects you have in a separate file. So you select the objects by using either the move tool or select object tool, then press File > Save Selected and you can give it a name and it will only save the selected objects you have in the file.
Archive
The Archive option is very similar to the Save As option, but instead of saving as a (.max) extension, it does a (.zip). If you are not familiar with the (.zip) extension, this is a compressed format and it’s very helpful if you want to send your file to a friend or colleague over the internet as it is a much smaller file size.
So you can go to File > Archive, give the file a name, press Save and it will save your file with all your objects, materials, textures, etc as a (.zip) file.
Import
Now another very important thing to know when working with 3Ds Max is how to import objects, other projects, files, etc into your current file. If you go to File > Import, you have a few options. The first option is if for example, you have an empty scene and you just want to import something into this empty scene.
The second option is if you want to import another file into a current file, for example if you have this file saved as 123 and you want to import another file called 456 into it. I would go to File > Import > Merge, because you are merging two files together. So, what that would do is if you select merge and bring another file into the current file, it will import whatever you have in that file for example if you have a tea cup, it will import that tea cup into this current project so you can use it in your scene.
I would not recommend using this next option File > Import > Replace, because this replaces everything you have in this current scene with objects from another file. It might ruin your work so be careful when using this option.
You can also go to File > Import > Link Revit, a Revit file is another Autodesk software, so that option is quite helpful.
Also, File > Import > Link FBX, an FBX is a certain object file where a lot of modellers use when exporting their models and putting them online for sale. So, if you download files online from websites like 3dSky, a lot of them will have FBX. So if it does have that file extension, you would have to go to File > Import > Link FBX > Locate the file > Open.
Reset
The reset option is also quite helpful when you just want to start from scratch and you want to remove everything without having to delete everything manually. So you go to File > Reset > Don’t Save > Reset and you will be left with a clean version of 3Ds Max.
Hopefully you found this blog helpful and if you would like to see a video tutorial, it will be linked below.
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