A new Mar-9-2007 beta release is now available at the download page: http://moi3d.com/download.htm.

This release is focused on Booleans.

Booleans between surfaces and solids now work well - previously a boolean between a solid and a surface could create a sort of messed up object.

New "auto-extrude" allows for difference and intersection booleans between a solid/surface and a planar curve or a line. So for example draw a circle and use boolean difference to cut a cylindrical hole through a solid by using the circle as the object to subtract. MoI handles the extrusion of the circle for you automatically. Or another example is draw a sphere, and then draw a line flat on a plane that appears to cut the sphere in 2. Now you can boolean difference the sphere with the line to split the sphere into 2 solid chunks - this is different than using trim since the results are 2 solids instead of a surface like Trim generates.

New curve/curve booleans. You can now use boolean operations on a curve to curve level - this is applied if you select only all curves that are on the same plane when using the boolean commands. Closed curves form regions which can include holes for nested closed curves. Closed regions boolean against closed regions in the same way that solids boolean against solids. Closed curves and open curves can interact in a variety of ways - for instance you can difference a circle with some lines that go through it to cut the circle into smaller closed loops. You can model hatch-type patterns by intersecting a grid layout of open curves against a closed loop. Union will work to find a common closed region or regions to a set of overlapping open curves or lines.

New boolean merge operator - there is a new "merge" operation available which is activated when you select objects, run boolean intersection, but push "Done" without selecting anything for the second intersection set. This can be used to find a common volume to a set of surfaces where some of the surfaces are sticking through each other. It will also generate all combinations of volumes between 2 intersecting solids.

Updated Escape key handling - Escape will still cancel the currently running command as before, but now it can also be used to deselect all objects and turn off points if pushed repeatedly.

A couple other bug fixes.


- Michael