Export SDL files
 
 
 

To export an Scene Description Language (SDL) file

  1. Choose File > Export > SDL .

    The File Requestor appears.

  2. Type the full path and file name for the SDL file in the File Requestor, or click Show List and select the file using the File Lister. If you select a file using the File Lister, the SDL file will overwrite that file.
  3. Click Save SDL.

    To cancel the process, press Esc.

When exporting a SDL file

To edit an SDL file

To edit an SDL file, you must first convert it to ASCII format (text), using the Alias Binary SDL command-line utility (bsdl). This utility allows you to extract the text component from a binary SDL file, and replace the text component in a binary SDL file. This is useful if you need to hand-edit an SDL file.

SDL files now contain a binary component for large mesh files, because writing the data out as text would increase the size of the SDL file to an extent that parsing time by the renderer would also increase by a very large amount.

bsdl usage

bsdl extract [-f] <text> <binary>

Extract ASCII SDL to <text> from a binary SDL file called <binary>. The file <text> will not be overwritten unless the option -f is specified.

Any text editor can then be used to edit the <text> ASCII SDL file.

bsdl replace <text> <binary>

Insert the ASCII SDL file <text> into the binary SDL file <binary>, replacing the ASCII SDL data.

For more information on the formatting of SDL files, see SDL.html on the Technical reference page.