Hi Paul, thanks for your feedback!

> No back/left/bottom views. Perhaps clicking on the front/right/top views
> a second time to get the opposite side?

That's a great idea for how to handle it. I had messed around a bit with having a little arrow menu appear over those tabs to let you change them, but I like your idea better. I had skipped doing this because the way I had messed with was too awkward, so I had postponed working on it until after V1. Your idea makes it more feasible, but it still might end up postponed until after V1, just because of general lack of time.


> 3D could probably have a corresponding ortho mode, for doing planar
> stuff that doesn't align with other standard views.

This is another thing that I want to handle eventually, but have currently put in the "after V1" bucket.


> Export of .obj a little messy. Seems that each surface is a separate part which is
> grouped/combined to create the mesh. This means that in some sections vertices
> don't match, etc. Is it possible to create an .obj where edges match on joining
> surfaces and vertices are welded?

The edges should match between joined surfaces exactly, just the points are unwelded. If you're seeing a problem where joined surfaces don't produce the same edge structure, can you please post a model that demonstrates it? That would be a bug.

The new beta that I am releasing today has a greatly overhauled .obj export, so you'll probably want to grab that.

I'm still in the process of working on the meshing and I expect to work on the welding quite soon.


> This also explains why Wings3D has strange stuff happen upon import.

Wings3D appears to have bugs in its .obj import - in this (long) thread: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=162.1 , some sample OBJ files were loaded into several different applications and they worked fine everywhere except for Wings3D. I also replicated problems with exporting models from Rhino into Wings3D without using MoI at all. This very much leads me to believe that Wings3D has problems with its .obj import, it is possibly related to models that have a closed seam on them, like tubes or cylinders.


> Not much in the way of simple documentation beyond a descriptor.

This will get better more towards the end of the beta. If you find something confusing, please don't hesitate to post a question on it here in this forum.


> Blend doesn't seem to do anything at all.

Right now blend only works if you have selected 2 surface edge curves. If you just select 2 curves instead of edges, it won't do anything right now, eventually it will do a curve blend in that case though.


> Even setting up an "official" wiki somewhere where the well initiated could explain things would be nice.

It would be nice. I'm afraid that the time to work on that is rather nonexistent right now though. In the meantime this forum is the next closest thing.


> Future pricing? (No nurbs parallel to Wings3d yet, but Silo maybe...) What is the plan?
> Is it going to be around $100(US) for absolute beginners? Or is it going to be more
> expensive and cater to professionals who may be able to throw budget money at stuff
> for a "simple" pipeline tool?

The pricing is not completely set yet, but the plan is that it will be very affordable compared to other CAD programs, it shouldn't be too far off from Silo2 pricing, probably a bit more than that but not too much. It will be more than $100, though.

However, I feel that I should mention that MoI is absolutely intended to be a professional tool, that is it is intended to be a tool that is highly productive and easy to use at the same time, and that does a lot of useful things. But I expect people to use it conjunction with other software quite a lot, so it will be priced to be accessible to many.

- Michael