Hi Anna, well it's difficult to make just one blanket statement that "x is better than y" - it's more of a mixture. In some particular things MoI is better and in some particular things Rhino is better.

I'd say that MoI is especially strong in the area of booleans though, I frequently see people post examples of boolean problems in Rhino that are able to be done in MoI. But even that can vary in a particular case.

MoI's filleter is not up to the same level as something like SolidWorks, but it does seem to handle mechanical type parts somewhat better than Rhino but again that can vary in particular cases.

Rhino has advantages in its deformation toolset (the UDT tools), and more things set up for maintaining continuity in surfacing operations.


> Could this be right? is the underlying technology better
> or different somehow?

Actually there are some differences in the underlying technology - I think the geometry engine that MoI uses is able to represent non-manifold shapes more fully than Rhino's system.

The system that MoI uses is a full implementation of Kevin Weiler's thesis, including the "faceuse" structure where it is possible to set up a non-manifold face (one face bordering on 2 adjacent solid regions kind of like a cell wall) rather than only non-manifold edges. This can be useful as an intermediate stage in boolean processing and I think it is a big factor that helps MoI's booleans work so well.

But on the other hand it is also a more complex structure.


Also MoI's geometry engine is able to represent solids with void pockets inside of them, such as a smaller interior sphere booleaned away from a larger outer sphere solid which Rhino is not able to do.

 

> that you Michael were thinking of adding SubD
> modeling in Moi, is that right?

Yup, it is definitely something that I'm interested in.

But it is going to take quite a bit of work to make it happen, so I'm not sure when it will happen, it may be a while.

- Michael