Question: Exporting 3D plots in Maple 15

The problem has been discussed in mapleprimes before, but I have not come across a neat solution. Perhaps there is one. What is the state of the art for exporting 3D graphics (plot3d, etc.) with Maple 15?

What I think I know is this: standard GUI has a completely new way of treating 2D graphics but has an outdated way of rendering 3D, while the classic GUI, though no longer developed, for some reason typically renders better 3D graphics.

I used to export graphics under the classic GUI and I was reasonably happy (not thrilled, you understand, the quality of 3D graphics in classic GUI is still subpar, but in standard it is appalling). My problem is that now I use  features not available in classic, and am unable to open my worksheet (produced with standard) with classic.

Is there a way to access the classic driver for 3D plots from standard?

Apparently Maple 15 has introduced some improvements in the graphics department. Would these allow me to improve the quality of the 3D exports? Here is a discussion of the plottools:-getdata command.

http://www.maplesoft.com/support/help/AddOns/view.aspx?path=plottools/getdata

This seems to be quite useful:

http://www.mapleprimes.com/maplesoftblog/119397-Exporting-3D-Plots-To-Minecraft-Using-Maple-15

Has anyone used plottools/getdata to produce nice 3D graphics with some other software? If so, would you explain briefly how to proceed? (I use both Windows and Linux).

At this time, I have experimented with plotsetup to postscript, png, gif, jpeg. I got the best results with gif, provided I enlarge the plot beforehand. So I right-click and select Manipulator->Scale. Only then do I export. And exporting to gif by right-clicking produces a better output than doing so by plotsetup(gif, etc). Is there an even better way than that?

http://www.maplesoft.com/support/help/Maple/view.aspx?path=worksheet/plotinterface/panscale

Is there a way to scale the graphic without right-clicking, by writing a few lines of code?

Doug recently asked the same question but, to my knowledge, got no answer:

http://www.mapleprimes.com/questions/98828-Default-Setting-For-Point-Probe-And-Manipulator

A few discussions on mapleprimes with links (there are many more, just a quick sample):

http://www.mapleprimes.com/questions/40432-Maple-V-1996-Vs-Maple-11-2007-ps-Exporting
http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/40380-Manipulating-eps-Output
http://www.mapleprimes.com/posts/38963-Poor-Quality-Of-Graphics-Exported-To-EPS