Hi Tom

Thank you very much for the reply and understanding. To be honest, replies like that are the type that give me hope living in my world as I have learn't to live in the one society expects. As you have spent time around autistic people I know you'll understand what I mean.

You make some great points about the learning process. Tinkercad is a great learning tool. 123D has been the only program I could somewhat master over the years, but like Tinkercad it has limited features. I was very upset when 123D was shelved as I saw a huge opportunity for many people thrown out the window and replaced with the much steeper learning curve of Fusion 360, plus forcing people to use a cloud-based interaction.


You mention visual menus vs drop drown menus, that sounds a lot like the difference between the coding methods of line editors vs visual scripting. Both can be good depending on the user. There's an emerging field of creating code using spoken or text prompts and then "AI" interpreting that to offer answers. This is more than adding something like voice recognition to Chat GPT, this new tech will be the "how to do it" like using Chat GPT and also a streamlined workflow interaction for the development of conceptual virtual or physical models and many other things like movies, games, various types of scientific research etc... Scary maybe, but it's already here and will evolve and change many things in the near future. This also presents incredible business opportunities for those who can see this future. Of course that is just a side note, money is only a tool imo.


My take on the immediate (although limited) number of future years for fully manual cad is there's a huge demand for an easy to use program that doesn't overwhelm you all at once. Many people have a need or desire to make things with 3D printing or even modeling for virtual uses, but don't have the time to spend learning technical language or deep menu-driven complex relational programs. I think the virtual modeling side has so far better options towards this than engineering cad does. Out of anger from shelving the development of 123D I thought of creating such a program in partnership with others, but life seems to have other plans for me with other projects. I'm really an advocate of using high tech software with "non-tech" user friendly UI and workflows.

May I tell you a short story please of how I got into game dev... I was trying for a few weeks to learn a version of the Unreal engine editor UI. My eyes just glazed over trying to figure it out, even with the tutorials. A day came and I was truly about to finish with trying to understand even basic things when I met a young lad on a game dev discord server who said he would explain the UI to me. A couple of hours later I understood enough to continue. After some time I was accepted into a two week game development bootcamp and finished that. Then some months later I went on to win my first game jam and $200 prize. Not a big prize, but it shows one can succeed even when all seems hopeless.

You wrote: "As for whether or not to wait for V5, my own prejudice would be to go for V4 because while their are definitely some added capabilities in V5, you will be in a much better place to take advantage of them having worked with MOI3D for a while. V5 will not radically change the way you use MOI3D." I agree, this sounds reasonable.

You Wrote: "I am in this for the long haul... at least as long a haul as any 79 year old has! LOL!" That is very impressive and I wish yo many more years of health, happiness and creating to come. I'm 59 and I really hope I'm as cognitive as you when/if your age.

Maybe this find you well,

Cheers, Rob