Ok, that's fine but you don't need to complicate things by trying to use the direct X shader. It's not necessary. Just create your texture normally. Put your bitmap in the "Diffuse" slot and then in the "Bump" slot, choose "Normal Bump" and then add your normal map there.

I think I see the problem. I can see my result in F9 render only. Otherwise I do not see it even though I have show maps checked. I do have an inexpensive video card, I wonder if that is some of my problems.

So you want to see the effect in the viewport? I don't really see the point of that. The whole point of using maps to create detail is so you don't have to deal with it eating up resources and bogging down your system. The detail is generated during rendering.

The direct x shader is for game developers so they can see how their materials will look in the game as they animate their characters and move them around in the viewport. It's not really for people doing still renders of a house. I've never used it myself, because I don't work in the game industry and therefore have no real use for it. If I want to see how something will look I will just do a quick render to check materials.

But, to each his own. If that's how you want to work, it's up to you.

That would probably be a good idea. Learning this program on your own is very difficult. I know because I did it. If you can't find a class, look online for training DVD's. There are lots of them out there.

Autodesk only just recently added an import option for Inventor files in 2011 or 2010, but as far as the two programs talking to each other, I don't think that's possible.

If you're working in Autocad, you can reference your dwg file into Max with the "File Link Manager", much like an xref in Autocad. Any changes you make to the dwg file can then be updated in the Max file. But that functionality is not available for Inventor. Maybe in a future release?

I did not receive an email from you. Try sending it again. I could take a look at your model, but I'm not an architect. So if you're looking for design tips, I wouldn't really be able to give you much.