quote:
5387.2 In reply to 5387.1
Hi Felix, I haven't had a chance to watch the whole video yet, maybe if you could include the particular time at which each of your points occur that would let me see what you're describing without having to watch through the entire video first.
re: #1 - you can get a view looking straight down a surface normal using the View > CPlane tool in MoI - when you place a cplane the "Top" view in moi will be looking exactly down on it. It's only a 2 click process to place a cplane - an initial click to place the base point and then you can adjust the orientation of how you want to be twisted around that normal (by like banking left or right) or if the default banking is fine then do a right click to accept that placement and you'll be done.
re: Fill - yup I definitely want to add in an N-sided blend mechanism into MoI that I think is what you're referring to there. It's unfortunately a pretty finicky area to get working well so I'm not quite sure exactly when it will happen but it's certainly on my list.
re: various constraints - I'd love to add those in as well, however they will involve a considerable amount of additional UI systems that are required to manipulate them. Things that involve a lot of new UI will tend to be slow to get added into MoI since it's very easy for large amounts of UI to also introduce complexity and "bloat", and have a lot of potential to turn MoI from a light and easy to use tool into a complex and difficult to use program. Keeping that "light and easy to learn" overall feel is a very important goal for MoI so things that require a lot of complexity to manage are not an instant easy fit with MoI, it requires a huge amount of design time for me to try and figure out good ways of integrating such elaborate things while not adding too much complexity.
So those kinds of things may be possible at some point in the future but some of those are rather farther off.
N-sided blend will probably be one of the sooner ones than constraints, because I think it can be added as just one new command so it should not introduce a lot of UI bloat.
SolidWorks as a whole has a big system in place for building and editing constraints, and I think some of the features that you are referring to go along with that entire system - basically those ones are much more difficult to add into MoI without adding in a corresponding overall large system of editing them. That focus in SolidWorks of building things in a "feature tree" manner has a big impact on the overall workflow, one of the things that's nice about MoI is that it has a very light and fluid workflow and basically lets you just freely draw and you don't always have to be going through as many preparation steps in order to do things.
- Michael
re re 1- I understand we can create a cplane just as easy in Moi. I mentioned this feature of SW because it seems to work a bit like "magic" and I find this pretty nice feature.
re re Fill- If I understand correctly, in SW when you set a constraint or a relation like is establish near 19:40 on the profile curve, we are insured it will be maintained all the way along the rail curve (or edge of the surface). The same is true with the other end of the profile where a C2 relation is set. (this happen a little bit before 19:40) All this is not related to a fill command yet, SW calls it a loft, I believe in Moi it as to do with a 2 rail sweep and I'm not sure it would be possible now to maintain these type of constraint through out the sweep. I assume this would be the kind of feature you're working on but a la Moi of course.
re re: various constraints You mention at some point you wanted to add something like a property page and you mentioned as well, if I recall correctly, that you thought of using a dialog box in that specific case. Probably because it would require more UI space then available. Maybe this would be the way to go when a specific command would require a bit to much UI space. Maybe you could consider kind of blanking temporarely all the space under "Moi" and bring up a specific UI for the command currently used. Something like a frameset and or frame used to provide, just a thought.
Though I mention the constraint stuff in point 2, I was thinking more of a new curve command with handles like shown in the video. I would think it would be much easier to trace pretty nice flowing curve over bitmaps for example with such a tool. Currently, for the purpose of tracing bitmaps, I'm creating strait line a tangency points and use the blend command to create nice flowing curve in the mathematical sense that match as much as possible the underlying bitmap but as you know working like this creates a joined curve with a bunch of corner point that also create (unwanted) edge when use with the sweep command. What can I say, when I look at an object, say like the mouse in the video, I find it disrupting to see all these edge where the underlying surfaces are joined. I know it's easy to hide them in Moi but it's a bit more complicated to return to the previous view.
Re - N-sided blend- If I'm not mistaking, currently the blend command offers a form of continuity constraint that applies to both edge and we can't set it for each edge independently. Though a blend command that would work on more then 2 edges at a time would be more then welcomed, I would believe, the possibility of controling the continuity on each edge would be the ultimate goal of such a command. Something that could be similar in functionality to what is shown around 27:15 and though it would be nice to see the surface mesh adjust while setting the edge constraint, I understand a simple looking detail like that would require way to much UI and coding for the purpose it serve. I'm sure implementing edge by edge continuity constraint to the blend command is already complex enough by itself that the kind of visual feedback shown in the video can be left out without affecting the functionality of the command.
Just in case you didn't know yet, I wouldn't change my Moi for anything else even if it was free. I'm addicted to Moi and I don't think I'll live long enough to change my mind on this.
Regards,
Felix
