Hi Len!

> 1) There seems to be a bug in the mirror command.

Yeah there is a bug in the Nov-21 v2 beta which kind of messes up the directions of objects that are mirrored. This one should be fixed if you apply the patch from Burr's link above. You may want to delete your previous mirrored objects and re-mirror them once you're patched.

Also for the next v2 beta I have tuned things up some more beyond that so that the surface-normal direction on open surfaces will not flip direction when they are mirrored which will currently happen. However if you apply the patch the normal direction for solids should be fine currently even after mirroring.


> 2) For some reason I can't union the body to the nose section,
> even though they share the same construction curves.

Generally you might try using Edit/Join rather than boolean union when you have 2 surfaces that share a common edge already. Boolean union is sort of more intended for pieces that need to be intersected rather than already having touching edges... But join still has a problem with this one too, I'll need to debug into that some to see why.


Re: #3 / #4 - it sounds like you got these figured out now?
Did you find the info here: Q: Why does show points work for some objects but not others?


> it would be nice to be able to specify some divisions (example:
> revolve with 6 or 8 divisions)

I would like to set that up as a choice, but right now you can set that up by using Transform/Array/Circular to make that radial arrangement of curves and then do a Loft through them with the Closed option. Then you should be able to edit those curves and watch the Loft update.


> 5) When exporting to Softimage using FBX or Obj formats
> (and perhaps others), the normals are always reversed. Not a
> big deal once you know but confusing at first.

On everything including closed solids? Or are you talking about on open surfaces?

MoI doesn't automatically know which side of an open surface should be the "outside" so things like that may have either normal orientation. But if you have a solid MoI should be able to automatically determine the "outside" direction of that and point the polygon normals in that direction.

Can you please do a test with some basic solids like a box and a sphere and see if those are reversed for you or not?


> 6) An N-sided patch would be most welcome as would be a variable radius fillet.

Yeah I do expect to get to both of these eventually. They are each kind of tricky though.

Variable radius fillet is mostly a matter of getting a good UI done for it. But good UI design tends to be a time consuming area of work as well.

The N-sided patch is a bit harder yet then that, it is something that tends to have oscillations in the generated surface unless it is done pretty carefully.


> re: #7 - network surface

Basically Network needs to have a curve arrangement that can be unwrapped to a 2D grid pretty much the same as how a globe of the earth with latitude and longitude lines can be unwrapped to a 2D map.

So similar to a globe, you can only have 2 "pole" regions where endpoints of more than 2 curves all collapse together.

In your case if I separate the curves a bit for illustration, you can see you've got 5 poles:



So basically that current arrangement is not right for Network all in one shot.

To do it all in one shot probably the easiest arrangment is to have the curve on the left here:



be joined together all as one long single curve rather than as 4 separate curve fragments. Then that will have an arrangement with that long curve similar to the equator line of a globe with the other ones coming to touch at one "pole" at their other ends.

Does that make sense?

Thanks for posting the models, that really helps a lot in analyzing what is happening! I'll see if I can find out about that nose cone joining problem.

- Michael