Hi scott, yeah the main focus for MoI is on getting things drawn really quickly and fluidly.

Usually other CAD programs that focus on history have a lot of additional setup stuff that you have to do as part of the workflow, like before you can draw you have to pick a drawing plane, engage certain modes, and stuff like that. There is typically more process involved. That can pay off down the road for making adjustments but it can also tend to really stifle just the basic drawing and initial creation process, sometimes making things complex enough that the whole program requires quite a bit of training in order to operate.

MoI is set up to try and bring the primary beneficial essence of NURBS modeling (which is basically building shapes primarily by 2D profile curves) to be more approachable.

It can be a great companion to sub-d modeling because a lot of man-made objects are very well defined by 2D profile curves, and have cut out areas which can be very labor intensive to model with sub-d techniques where to make even a basic hole you have to be a kind of master of topology. With NURBS modeling to make a hole you just draw a 2D curve and do a boolean.

> still it would be useful and maybe marketeable to retain sub d concepts like edge loop and
> edge ring selections but to tangent curves or nurbs edges as we have here.

Really the NURBS process is strongest when you're using 2D profile curves for the majority of your work other than selecting edges for filleting. The overall workflow is really different from sub-d so it's not really that feasible to try and make it resemble sub-d, it's a completely different kind of technique.

But that difference is also why it can be useful as a companion since it can just do a better job (more quickly and easily and also more accurately) of certain kinds of shapes.

If your model is more organic or semi-blobby in shape then that becomes a better fit for sub-d modeling techniques. The more that your model is strongly defined by 2D profile curves with holes or cut out areas in it the more it becomes suitable for NURBS modeling techniques.

But the overall approach of NURBS modeling is pretty different than sub-d - you want to rely on 2D curves a lot more and also rely on booleans and cutting operations as a primary way of doing things. That can take a little while to sink in for people from a sub-d modeling background who are used to avoiding booleans at all costs. Instead with NURBS modeling often times building things as a simple extended piece and then using booleans should be the main approach.

Check out here for some links to discussions and general tips for people who are coming from a sub-d / poly modeling background:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4865.2

- Michael