Run through the ink n' paint tutorial. It's a slow render, but it'll do the job. Unfortunately, it's a raster file and not a vector. Otherwise, try a rhino rendering with the isoparms on. It's not a crime to use more than one piece of software to get the job done.

.mm

mental ray. you'll be able to get vector output.

set up a camera in max, export to autocad. the saved view transfers so you can just print to eps, and overlay the vector drawing on top of teh max rendering... otherwise there are ways to render hidden lines but not 2d vector files in max...

ok... maybe im wrong

Thanks so much. DEVicox, do you know the relevant mental ray settings, for the hidden line effect? Can it work with scene contouring turned on?

illustrate plugin.

swift3d plugin.

both create hidden line vector format in 3dsmax.

both can be customized to add shading with lines of varying weights, yada yada .. has been mentioned in the forums before - search away!!

ps. mental ray's vector output in max is not too great, illustrate gives you more options.

another way, (although a bit time consuming) is to (1) group your entire model (2) clone it (3) apply the lattice modifier to the clone and then render both together, looks great every time.

you final render plugin

Final Render will output a vector, hidden line rendering (with a billion options) via Final Toon (which is an amazing program).

You can output the vector lines, the fills, etc., as any kind of vector format you want. You can make the lines look like anything you want, change thickness based off of angle, shadows, etc. Really, just amazing stuff. Sound intimidating, but if you have Final Render (fToon comes with it), you can get a good image in a few minutes (at least that's how long it took me to get what I wanted).

There are two ways that I have been able to get the outline look to work- the first of the two works better than the second method.

Option 1: select all of your geometry and do an edit mesh. Select all edges and choose the button "create shape from edges" further down the modify window. Make sure to tick linear and ignore hidden edges. Next you will have to select the new shape or shapes and in the modify tab- rendering pull down, tick "renderable" and give them a thickness. Then just apply a material to the new shapes and render away. The nice thing about this technique is that you can give different shapes different edge thicknesses.

option 2: clone all of your geometry, or only the specific parts that you want to give an edge to, and apply a wireframe material to them. You will have to adjust the line thickness under the material parameters.

Both options require that you render both at the same time- easy!

Thanks alot for your input... was able to get Final Render up and running in a couple of hours and it did beautiful (if somewhat counterintuitive) renders.