Hi,

I'm looking at Moi as a candidate for modeling furniture with carved details such these (http://www.woodweb.com/cgi-bin/forums/cad.pl?read=640449) for example.

I understand that Moi3d does mostly Nurbs modeling and maybe modeling some of these carvings would be done more efficiently using for example displacement mapping or some other technique. The question that comes to mind is how to approach, what strategies, method or whatever one could use to design such a complete model using various apps. (which ones possibly) and combining the various parts into a single model that can be rendered without mortgaging the house of course.

My goals can be split in 2, I'd like to create a complete design similar to this "armoire" and render the model to show to potential clients and use the same model to generate tool-paths for a CNC router. Currently, I have BobCad V24 with the BobArt module which can be used to say emboss a few details here and there. But, I just don't like the idea of using BobCad as a modeling tool it would simply take for ever to design something like the armoire shown on the link page. Fortunately, it can read 3dm file (at least those from Rhino) hopefully it would be the same with Moi (I haven't downloaded Moi yet). I'm also using Sketchup for pieces like this armoire but with no carvings of course. From what I've seen so far it looks like Moi is just as easy to use as SU if not easier and much more powerful.

As additional info, I also have Blender and GMax (a clone of 3ds Max) but to me these are unusable as I would save a lot of time by physically carving the stuff directly but that's also out of the question. Modeling, rendering and CNC carving and machining (routing) the various parts is my preferred approach. So I'm looking for any knowledge, techniques and modeling tools (apps) to could help me on this quest.


Thanks in advance,
Felix