Full Version: Temporary Lock of Geometry via Keystroke & Moving Geometry?

Hello,

I'm liking the defeaturing feature incorporated into MoI, one less application to bounce between.

I'd like to be able to quick lock/unlock via keystroke hold/tap to lock a curve or surface down so I can grab attached geometry that I'd like to defeature or delete. I could do the same via layers and objects but that sort of the defeats the expectation of something being MoI easy.

On a related note I think I tracked down the issue with surface movement? It doesn't usually work for me if I want to move a face and try to use a snapping point on the object itself. Using another object to snap works consistently well.

Also, I can't figure out how to assign a keystroke shortcut to Hide objects? Do I need a script for that?

Thanks.

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Hi OSTexo,

re:
> I'd like to be able to quick lock/unlock via keystroke hold/tap to lock a curve or surface down
> so I can grab attached geometry that I'd like to defeature or delete.

Do you mean lock like pushing the Edit > Lock button on the side pane? That makes objects not selectable?


> On a related note I think I tracked down the issue with surface movement? It doesn't usually work for me
> if I want to move a face and try to use a snapping point on the object itself. Using another object
> to snap works consistently well.

For now put in a point object (Draw curve > More > Point) at your target before doing the move.
This should be improved in the next release though, where the original object outline will show with
a light dashed wireframe like it does when moving an entire object currently.


> Also, I can't figure out how to assign a keystroke shortcut to Hide objects? Do I need a script for that?

Put in this:
script: moi.geometryDatabase.hide();


- Michael

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Hello Michael,

Yes, I'd like to be able to select a surface and toggle lock it via keyboard shortcut. That'll allow me to stay in the work field rather than bouncing back and forth between work field and command selection. I wonder if it's possible to have lock history with that as well, may be helpful when dealing with levels of detail.

Sounds good, I'll continue the point helper trick when moving faces.

Is there a way to have hide and unhide history via keyboard shortcut similar conceptually to lock and unlock? For example if I have three objects and I hide them in order 1,2,3 is it possible to unhide them via keystroke 3,2,1?

That would be helpful as I'm making my way down different branches of a model to modify or defeature rather than searching for objects in the tree.

Thanks.

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Hi OSTexo,

Attached is a script called HideMem that I use in place of the native Hide. It keeps a memory of what was hidden last and if it's run again with nothing selected it will un-hide the most recently hidden stuff. The isolate part of it also works a little differently to allow drilling into nested groups.

I like your idea of storing the full history of hide operations so that they can be undone sequentially. This script could be modified to do that, though I don't have time to tackle that at the moment. One problem with this script is that it runs slowly in heavy scenes; especially those with a lot of nested groups.

Install by going to MoI's appdata folder.

On Windows you can find the MoI appdata folder by typing Win+R to bring up the Windows "Run" dialog and then type in:
%AppData%\Moi\

On Mac from a Finder window, go to the menu and pick Go > "Go to folder" and type in:
~/Library/Application Support/Moi/

You should see the folders “commands”, "startup", and "scripts". Put HideMem.htm and HideMem.js in scripts.

To set up shortcut keys go to Options > Shortcut Keys and paste in each of following three lines as a separate key:

HideMem
script:/* view hidden objects */moi.command.setOption('HideMem', 'ctrl'); moi.command.execCommand('HideMem');
script:/* isolate */moi.command.setOption('HideMem', 'rmb'); moi.command.execCommand('HideMem');

To replace the native Hide button with this version put EditTabContent_customizer.js in the startup folder.

- Peer

Attachments:
HideMem.zip

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Hi OSTexo,

For this part:
> Yes, I'd like to be able to select a surface and toggle lock it via keyboard shortcut.

You can make a keyboard shortcut that does the same as pushing the Edit > Lock button by putting in this for the "Command" part of the shortcut key:

script: moi.geometryDatabase.lock();

- Michael

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Hello,

Thanks for the info pressure. Unfortunately the models I'm working with can be fairly heavy at the start as I begin defeaturing and stripping off the details to build them back up or organize them to pass along to others so they can do their work.

Session history on tools like lock and hide would be nice, I'm not in either camp when it comes to parametric vs. direct modeling, I think trying to force those two methods together is a mistake. There is a third option that can be built that really mimics how many humans learn to design physical products intuitively. I use version control systems, but having one designed into a product kind of squashes the debate on which method is "better". I'm doing it in MoI already, but it's manual and clunky. I like the idea of being able to take quick model snapshots and to save those onto layers while moving back and forth on those layers easily to see the structure and branches of the model tree. That way I can have milestones throughout the model and even copy branches off the model to send to others while preserving file compatibility for everyone. I don't care much about saving history outside the current session, that's what the snapshotting to layer is for.

Michael, thanks for the script for locking, it'll help me in process.

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