A new v2 beta (version Feb-21-2010) is now available for download here:
http://moi3d.com/beta.htm

This should be the final v2 beta release. The next step before v2 is completely finished will be to update the documentation.

New stuff:

New Inset command, located under Construct > Offset :



The Inset command takes in a selection of face sub-objects, and will produce either a depressed or raised panel that follows the outline of those faces.

Some demos:







It's also possible when going outwards to expand the shape, making a kind of "hat" placing effect:



These are the options for Inset:



The thickness distance sets the border size of how far the panel shrinks in from the border, and also how far it protrudes as well. The protrusion amount can be adjusted separately if you want by the "Use separate height" option.

The Direction option sets whether the protrusion goes towards the inside of the object or towards the outside. Direction = Inwards looks like this:



Direction = Outwards looks like this:



When Direction is set to "Outwards" an additional "Expand" checkbox will appear which can be set to make the panel outline grow in size rather than shrink. This is the hat placing effect:



The "Grooved" option can be checked which will enable an additional Groove width that can be set to produce results like this (first one with Direction = Inwards, second one with Direction = Outwards):




If you set the "Grooved" option but do not enter a groove width, or set groove width = 0, then that will cause a plug interior part to be generated as another separate independent object from the main one.

The Inset command relies on solid offsetting to generate its results, and there are currently quite a few situations where solid offsetting can get confused. It will tend to work best when the offsets being generated have the same topology, like not having pieces that either separate in topology (like 1 vertex needing to become 2 vertices in the offset), or converge like edges collapsing totally away.



Added a "Keep corners" checkbox for the Rebuild command in # Points mode. This can be disabled to rebuild the curve as one single segment instead of rebuilding each segment individually.


Updated background images for scripting - made the background image placement, width, and height available to scripts. This makes it possible now to make a script that will create a regular plane object on top of each image, so that it is possible to export the placement of a background image to a different program. To use it set up the following script on a shortcut key:

script: var images = moi.view.getBackgroundImages(); for ( var i = 0; i < images.length; ++i ) { var img = images.item(i); var f = moi.command.createFactory('plane'); f.setInput( 0, img.frame ); f.setInput( 2, img.width ); f.setInput( 3, img.height ); f.commit(); }


Bug fixes:

Updated 1-rail sweep mitering with a new mechanism for trimming the miter joints when using curved segments inside of a planar rail. So mitered corners should work much better with curved segments now. Curved segments will generally need to be coplanar with one another though in order to get a mitered result.

Fixed a multi-threading race condition bug in the export mesher, which could cause some edges of a solid to get an excessively dense number of vertices on them in certain timing conditions.

Updated analytic surface/surface intersections to fix a boolean problem reported in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3190.1

Updated boolean tolerances to incorporate some tolerance tightening if they run into a problem. Fixes a v2 regression boolean bug reported in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3190.9

Fixed a Trim bug when trimming a solid by a curve that was on the solid (like an already projected curve). The mechanism for detecting which face each curve segment was on could sometimes get confused but now should be fixed.

Fixed a bug with selection undo where edge selection did not behave properly after a selection undo that restored an edge selection. Reported on the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3272.1

Updated to the latest IGES, SAT, and STEP libraries from HarmonyWare, includes several bug fixes.

Updated SKP export to only export curves to SKP format if no solids were also being exported. This helps to avoid a crash bug in the SkpWriter library where it could crash when creating an SKP polyline curve that had curve vertices located nearly coincident to some mesh vertices. This should help to avoid some SKP export crashes that have been reported.


- Michael