A new v2 beta (version Oct-19-2009) is now available for download here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm

You will need to enter your v1 license key to download the v2 beta.

The v2 beta installs into its own folder, it is not a problem to have v1 and any v2 beta installed on the same machine, in fact I recommend that so that you can fall back to v1 if you run into some temporary bad bug in v2.


V2 is very close to being wrapped up, but I still have a little bit of work left for Sweep (for mitered corners) and probably Groups before it is all ready so there will still be at least one more beta to come after this one.

This release kind of "clears the decks" of a variety of accumulated bugs and loose ends.


New stuff:


Added new Silhouette command under Construct > Curve > Silhou - this can be used to create silhouette curves that give the profile of a curved surface from a particular view.



This may be particularly useful to run before exporting to AI format - set up your view how you want it, then run Silhouette to generate the outline curves, then immediately export all of that to AI format. Make sure not to rotate or zoom your view in between generating the silhouettes and exporting because the silhouettes are tied to a particular viewpoint when they are done in the 3D view.

For example given this model:



Running Silhouette on it will generate these curves:






Added "Curve from 2 views" functionality to the Construct > Curve > Isect command.

This produces a curve from 2 planar profile curves from different directions. It is the equivalent of doing an extrusion of each curve and intersecting the extruded surfaces.

So for example with these 2 curves one which was drawn in the Top view and one in the Front view:



You can select these 2 curve and run Construct > Curve > Isect to generate this result:





Updated 2-rail sweep to use a new mechanism for handling the rails - previously it was sensitive to how control points happened to be spaced in each rail, and there could be a kind of twisting or bunching effect that happened to the profiles as they moved at different "speeds" along each rail. Now they should move at more equal speeds along each rail regardless of control point spacing. This fixes several problems relating to twisted or bunched results in sweeping, such as:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2468.1
This is a pretty major change to the mechanics of 2-rail sweep, please let me know if you see any bad behavior with 2-rail sweep in this release.


Added option for controlling the perspective field of view angle, under Options > 3D view angles > Field of view.


Add asterisk to file name display. The current file name in the upper-right corner of the window will now get marked with an asterisk (*) at the end of it when there have been changes made to the active file.


Various enhancements for background images (the View > Image command):

- Undo now works to undo edits of the background images while still inside the Image command.

- Added properties button which pulls up a new Image properties dialog which allows editing the path to the image if you have moved it somewhere else, a checkbox option for embedding the image data directly in the 3DM file, and a Reload image button which can be used to reload the image if it has been changed. You can right-click on an image's file name as a shortcut for pushing the properties button.

- Added a cen snap to the center of background images when dragging or adding images.

- Make images display as a line in edge-on ortho viewports when in the image command, so they can be more easily seen and dragged from a side view to change elevations.


Reorganized the View section in Options dialog - a new "Colors" section holds various options relating to display colors.


New edge display options - added 2 additional choices under Options > View > Edge color: "Darkened" and "Lightened" which will display using the style color but adjust it towards black or towards white by a factor that can be controlled by a scroll bar that shows up.


New shortcuts for editing styles:

- In the Edit styles dialog, right-clicking on a style works as a shortcut for selecting it and pushing the "Edit" button.

- On a scene browser swatch, Ctrl+left click will pop up the color picker as a quick way to edit a style's color.

- On the properties panel, right-clicking on the style line will pop up the Edit style dialog and let you edit the name and/or color of that style.


New "Add default styles" menu item on the Styles menu launched from the Scene browser Styles section (off the little arrow to the right). This brings the default set of styles (either the stock default set, or the styles from your template file if you have set a startup template) into the current model at the top of the style list.


Updated File/Import so that when importing a file which contains no geometry but only styles in it, those styles will get added to the current style table.


Updated style inheritance for Booleans and Join - the object that was selected first will be used to set the properties on the new combined parent object. So for example if you have a red object and a blue object and you want to Boolean Union them together, select the one that you want to be dominant first. The name on the combined object will come from the dominant/first selected input and also the parent object style which is used in some cases for style assignment with newly created faces such as fillets.


Updated style assignments for new faces and edges. If a new face is completely surrounded by other faces of one single style, use that style for the newly created face. This helps to make things like fillets on a multi-style solid work more predictably - if a fillet is done in a localized area that has all one style then the fillet in that area will get the same style. If a newly created face is not surrounded on all sides by the same style, then the parent object's style will be used instead.


Make it possible to set just the parent style of a solid but not modify any of its sub-objects by holding down shift when clicking on a style swatch. This can come into play for controlling what style is assigned to newly created faces such as fillets as mentioned above.


Updated icon loading to make it easier to override the button icons that come from resources, as mentioned in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2920.34



Added a script method so it is possible to set up shortcut keys that work the same as turning the mouse wheel for zooming in or out, including focusing the zoom on the mouse cursor's current location. To use them, set up the following on a shortcut key:
For zooming in, set up:
script: /* Zoom in a step */ var vp = moi.ui.getActiveViewport(); if ( vp != null ) vp.wheelZoom( true );
For zooming out, set up:
script: /* Zoom out a step */ var vp = moi.ui.getActiveViewport(); if ( vp != null ) vp.wheelZoom( false );


Updated OBJ export (MTL file names). Replace spaces in MTL filenames (which hold the material definitions for an .OBJ file) with underscores by default, since some programs cannot deal with MTL files that have spaces in the file name. Spaces in .MTL file names can be enabled by a setting in moi.ini:
[OBJ Export]
AllowSpacesInMTLFileNames=n


Updated the mesh dialog, hide the "Weld vertices along edges" checkbox for STL and SKP exports where it is not used for anything.


Updated "on" type object snaps (including On, Axis, and OnSrf). Suppress these snaps when in a planar restriction mode in the 3D view and the snapped point is off the plane. Helps to avoid some confusing jumpy situations when trying to use operations such as Rotate in the 3D view. Discussed in the forum here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2889.1


Updated mesh options - there is now a setting in moi.ini that can be adjusted for what angle is used as the "rough angle" when the Avoid smaller than distance is being used. The default rough angle is 35 degrees but now a custom one can be set in moi.ini by this setting:
[Mesh Export]
AvoidSmallerThanRoughAngle=35



Bug fixes:

Fixed a bug with the Text command when generating surface output, where the surfaces of different letters did not necessarily get a consistent normal direction.

Made Extrude work more as expected when extruding a set of faces that are all in the same plane. They will all extrude in the same direction in this particular case now instead of each one going along its own normal directions.
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2999.1

Fixed a bug where Extrude would not work properly when given input curves that contained any segments approaching or under 0.001 units in length.

Fixed a bug with Loft seam alignment where long skinny surfaces could mistakenly use their natural seam alignment instead of the optimized one.
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2968.8

Fixed a bug where relative coordinate entry was not working properly during object dragging.

Fixed Edit > Show pts - updated the ShowPoints command to prompt for objects to select to turn points on for, if nothing was selected when it was launched.

Fixed bounding box calculation bug on dense helix curve reported in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2845.1

Fixed a bug where entering a numeric math expression did not support locales that used a comma as the decimal separator instead of a point.

Fixed a bug in the Merge command where edges were being incorrectly merged at singularity points such as at the pole of a sphere. These spots are now skipped, edges cannot be merged across a pole because the UV space trimming edges of each 3D edge do not touch each other in those cases.



Also a variety of smaller bug fixes and minor tweaks.


Please let me know if you run into any problems!

- Michael