Hi neo,

> Are there any plans for MoI to adapt the New "trend" of history
> Free/Direct Modeling approach ?

I would like to work on some stuff for that in the future, but I plan to tackle a deeper history function first.

The direct modeling type approach tends to require a very sophisticated analysis and feature recognition type mechanism, that is a complex thing to make work well, and even then it is kind of limited in the things that can be recognized.


> Will History Based Modeling be a thing of the past?

No, this is not very likely as there are many kinds of models that are made up of more freeform surfaces that cannot be easily recognized by the direct modeling type approaches.

For one example, just check out the MoI Pod video here:
http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/pod.htm

Check out around the 12:00 mark, where I edit the inputs to the sweep to tweak the shape, for example moving some of the points on the scaling rail and watching the sweep update.

You're not really going to see that particular kind of editing possible in a "direct modeling" approach because it is just too difficult to reverse engineer a complex freeform surface back into its original inputs, especially when multiple profiles and shaping influences have been applied to it.

For things like circles, holes, extrusions, primitives, that kind of stuff tends to be a better fit with the direct modeling approach, and many times mechanical parts are made up of only those kinds of structures, so that's why direct modeling is mostly oriented towards mechanical part design currently.


> Or a combination of the two methods in a correct manner is the best solution?

Yes, I think this is likely to be the case for very general purpose things.

But it does depend on what you are trying to do - if your goal is to only work on mechanical parts where there are no freeform surfaces in it at all, then there is a lot more chance that pure direct modeling with no history would work really well for that.

If you want to incorporate more stylized freeform surfaces into your design, that tends to make it more likely that you would need a history-based mechanism if you wanted to allow for adjusting the inputs to those freeform surfaces and have them update.


That Pod video should give you a good example on why direct editing can't just be applied as a complete blanket replacement for history - I believe you will be unable to repeat that scaling rail editing part of the Pod video in any current direct modeling system.

- Michael