Other notes on new stuff for in the Jan-19-2009 version:


The speed improvement on transforms (such as dragging, mirroring, arraying) works by a special "proxy" being used when the objects involved have more than 50 faces. Instead of creating a completely new object, the proxy will re-use the existing object and just draw it in a new location which is much faster than making a full copy if the object is complex. This allows for much smoother and faster dynamic feedback when moving the mouse around during transform operations on large objects. The 50 face threshold limit can be changed in moi.ini :
[Transform]
ProxyGenerationNumFaces=50
A proxy is not used for smaller objects so that you can get more history feedback on small objects, when a proxy is used any history update will not be applied until the transform is complete.


Updated mirror command so that objects that are not solids will not have their normals flipped after they are mirrored which would previously happen.


Enabled making copies while in edit frame wheel mode, by holding down Ctrl before dragging the mouse.


Enable grabbing an object snap point in wheel mode, rather than only grabbing on the wheel - this allows for grabbing a reference point to do an accurate rotation relative to some particular point on an object, which you previously had to use the Transform/Rotate command to do.
For examples see: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2243.8


Open as Read-only option. You can enable a "read only" checkbox for the file open dialog by a setting in the moi.ini file:
[FileDialog]
EnableReadOnlyCheckbox=y


You can now open a file as a "Template file" by using a right-click on the Open button. When you open a file as a template file, the current file name will remain blank so that it is not so easy to save over top of the template file itself.


New option to specify a startup template under Options / General / Template file. This allows you to create a file set up with the views and any template objects or other file properties that you want in it and have that file automatically opened when you start up MoI or do File/New.


Updated the FBX toolkit library to the latest 2009.3 version.


Update grid snap menu - added grid size and snap size entries to the mini grid snap menu that pops up above the grid snap button.


Made Ctrl+click be a "prefer deselect" mode. There is normally a preference that targets unselected curves in an area where many curves are nearby when you click, to make it easier to select them. Now when you hold down the Ctrl key this will be inverted to prefer targeting selected curves. This makes it easier to deselect an already selected curve in a crowded area when Ctrl is down. Additionally if Ctrl is down then a drill-in will not be done when clicking on an already selected solid so that you can deselect a solid with a single ctrl+click.


Updated NURBS export to SAT, IGES, and STEP formats - turned off analytic entites export by default and fixed some bugs in analytic export. There are now 2 settings to control enabling analytic export in the moi.ini file, one for curves and one for surfaces:
[NURBS Export]
WriteAnalyticCurves=n
WriteAnalyticSurfaces=n


Added some script functions to access the camera point from a script, it is now possible to run this script on a keyboard shortcut to copy the camera and target points to the clipboard so you can find out where they are to set them in another program:
script:var v = moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D'); moi.copyTextToClipboard( 'Camera=' + v.cameraPt.toString() + '\r\nTarget=' + v.targetPt.toString() );


Promoted LWO scale to meters setting to have an entry in the Options dialog, under Options / Import/Export / LWO .


Added option for LWO export to use either Modo's or LightWave's coordinate system for vertex normals. Unfortunately each of these programs uses a different coordinate
system for vertex normals. Which one is used can now be set in moi.ini under:
[LWO]
VertexNormalsStyleModoOrLW=Modo
the default is Modo, to set it to LightWave style switch it to:
[LWO]
VertexNormalsStyleModoOrLW=LW


There is now a new "Orient ortho views" option that you can un-check when setting up a cplane, which will leave the ortho views in their default world orientations but make the changed cplane available inside of them. This can help if you are tracing an image in the top view and you want the view to remain locked down in its regular viewing direction, but still change the cplane to an angle to draw over a particular angled part of the image.


updated line display - now when viewing a line in a viewport that is looking directly point-on to it, the line will show up as a small dot rather than being completely invisible.


There are now options in moi.ini for setting the default values used for meshing:
[Mesh Export]
Angle=
DivideLargerThan=
DivideLargerThanApplyTo=
AvoidSmallerThan=
AspectRatioLimit=


Also a variety of smaller bug fixes...


- Michael