Full Version: V4 Wish List

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Hi Michael and good morning.

Some days ago you have written somewhere that "MAYBE" there are only 3-4 more months to the first V4 betas releases,
and I want to remind you my "little" wish list for V4.


1) Dimensioning, instancing, and grouping are all absolutely "wanted dead or alive"
2) At least some basic "surface-continuity" tools like "Zebra stripes" and "Environement Map" like Rhino
3) G3 and G4 continuity for blend tool !! At least G3.
4) A revisited API interface with a complete access to Knot points, control points, curvature data.
5) It would be great if it were possible have these Rhino commands : MatchSrf, SelUV, MoveUVN, Cage and CageEdit
6) Better viewport rendering : ghosted mode, better anti-aliasing, line style for the edges
7) Display of IsoCurves
8) Export to AI and PDF with more customizable line styles.

I'm also confident that when you will decide to switch to a newer CAD Kernel, Moi will be more robust in Solid operations (Shelling, Offsetting, Filleting).


Best wishes for your job and have a nice day.

- Marco (mkdm)

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Oh yeah;

Groups, Instancing and Proxies (with simple boxes.)



Pleeeeeeeeeze! :-)

Just saying.
I mean, it was a nice little concept piece when it was one needle, but then it kinda did the whole rabbit thing on me until the save file was half a gig and the viewport slowed to a crawl with the angle set to 25 with on inflection detail.
I'm going to try doing the multiples in Thea except that when it came to stringing lights and adding ornaments I needed some geometry there to know where to put things.... Hmmm, still wrapping my head around it.


You know, some kind of proxy boxes swapped in, only when rotating or changing the view (with the higher geometry filling in when view is stationary) would be a great option to help folks with lesser video cards enjoy a snappy modeling experience.

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Hi Michael and good morning.

...I forgot to mention a couple of important (for me) requests in my previous post,
so I recap all here.

This is my FINAL wish list for V4 :

1) Dimensioning, instancing, and grouping are all absolutely "wanted dead or alive"

2) At least some basic "surface-continuity" tools like "Zebra stripes" and "Environement Map" like Rhino

3) G3 and G4 continuity for blend tool !! At least G3.

4) Command for ContinueCurve and Merge curve (VERY IMPORTANT for me)

5) A revisited API interface with a complete access to Knot points, control points, curvature data.

6) It would be great if it were possible have these Rhino commands : MatchSrf, SelUV, MoveUVN, Cage and CageEdit

7) Better viewport rendering : ghosted mode, better anti-aliasing, line style for the edges

8) Display of IsoCurves

9) Export to AI and PDF with more customizable line styles.

I'm also confident that when you will decide to switch to a newer CAD Kernel, Moi will be more robust in Solid operations (Shelling, Offsetting, Filleting).


Best wishes for your job and have a nice day.

- Marco (mkdm)

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Thanks everyone for posting your wishes here, this will be a good thread for me to revisit when I'm ready to resume working on new features instead of porting.

- Michael

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Hello Michael and good morning.

> "...when I'm ready to resume working on new features instead of porting"

I'm planning to upgrade my laptop with a new one based on latest 7th generation overclocked Intel i7.

Just a technical question (hoping that this isn't too invasive).

This fundamental porting to 64bit environment that you are working on, will give us some SPECIFIC advantage
when running on the new 7th generation Intel i7 ? (more cores, more thread, new gfx subset, new floating point instruction set, larger cache).

Thanks and have a nice day.

- Marco (mkdm)

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Hi Marco,

re:
> This fundamental porting to 64bit environment that you are working on, will
> give us some SPECIFIC advantage when running on the new 7th generation Intel i7 ?
> (more cores, more thread, new gfx subset, new floating point instruction set, larger cache).

Are you asking something like will MoI make use of some special unique function in this CPU that will suddenly make things work 10 times better than before?

No, it's generally not very feasible to do a lot of special case work to target one specific CPU release, because it's time consuming work that isn't able to be used by most people. Also it takes a while for compilers to catch up, so it's not like you can expect a current compiler to do anything special for a specific CPU right when that CPU is released.

But general improvements like larger cache and better integrated graphics would be incremental improvements for MoI as well I would think.

- Michael

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Hello Michael,

First of all I want to thank you your quick reply, as usual.

> "...so it's not like you can expect a current compiler to do anything special for a specific CPU right when that CPU is released..."

You got a point Michael!

When I have written my question the issue of the compiler was exactly what I had in mind.

I hope not to go too off topic or not to bore you with "just out of curiosity" questions, but,
assuming that Moi is developed in C/C++ I was wondering what compiler do you currently use for the developing of Moi,
and if this compiler gets some advantage from newer cpu, that is, 6th and 7th generation Intel i7.

Thanks again and good night!

- Marco (mkdm)

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Hi Marco, on Windows I'm using Visual C++ 2013 and on Mac clang/Apple LLVM version 7.3.0 . As far as I know neither has any special treatment for 6th and 7th generation Intel i7 CPUs, or at least not that I would be able to use without having a special version that would only run just on those CPUs and not on anything else. It would require a lot of extra work to have a special version of MoI for every different kind of CPU so targeting specific CPU models is not really practical for me.

I have seen that just the general switch from x87 floating point code to x64 SSE floating point code seems to give a speed boost but I don't have any numbers on that handy to give to you. Really I'm not sure if the improvement is from using SSE floating point or if it's the additional registers available. It is actually possible in some cases for conversion to 64-bit to actually reduce performance due to doubling the size of data that's being moved around but it doesn't seem like that is going to be the case here. The only thing I'm a little worried about is the 64-bit QtWebKit doesn't have as high of a JavaScript JIT engine enabled for it, I'm not sure yet if that will impact script performance very much or not.

- Michael

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Hi Michael and thanks again for your detailed reply. Much appreciated!

> "I have seen that just the general switch from x87 floating point code to x64 SSE floating point code seems to give a speed boost"

This is a very good thing...

> "It is actually possible in some cases for conversion to 64-bit to actually reduce performance due to doubling the size of data that's being moved around but it doesn't seem like that is going to be the case here."

This is an even better thing! A sigh of relief....
It's true. Especially for application that handle big chunk of data, the "upgrade" to 64bit often reduces the performances, but this is almost true only
for low-level hardware (poor cpu and old video card, and outdated ram/pci bus).

> "The only thing I'm a little worried about is the 64-bit QtWebKit doesn't have as high of a JavaScript JIT engine enabled for it, I'm not sure yet if that will impact script performance very much or not."

I don't know anything about this area of programming but I read this article : https://wiki.qt.io/New_Features_in_Qt_5.1, dated 25 March 2016.
If you search "Qt WebKit" into that page you will find this annotation :

"Qt WebKit :
JavaScript JIT on Windows 64 bit."

What do you think about ?

Best wishes for all your job and good night. (again)

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Hi Marco,

re:
> If you search "Qt WebKit" into that page you will find this annotation :
>
> "Qt WebKit :
> JavaScript JIT on Windows 64 bit."
>
> What do you think about ?

Yeah it's definitely helpful that it has the JIT enabled, before that it was interpreted only on the 64-bit Windows build. But there are different levels of the JIT and what you have found there is only about enabling the first level of it. I don't yet know how significant this will be.

- Michael

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Hello Michael,

> "...what you have found there is only about enabling the first level of it. I don't yet know how significant this will be."

Ok, I undesrtand.
Let's hope that dealing with QT don't cause any problems with scripting on 64bit porting.

I'm confident that you will find a good solution! :)

Best,

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+(Non-destructive modelling) timeline like in fusion 360

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Hi loveart,

> "Non-destructive modelling"

Hmmm....

Well...I'm not Michael but I do not think I am wrong in saying that this is not a simple "feature" to ask for, but it's a totally different kind of CAD.
Moi is not based on parametric or history modelling.

Have a nice day.

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hey guys
why not make a nice poll for new features? would be much appreciated..
M.

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Moi is my swiss army knife in 3D modelling. Quick, fast and obvious.

During the years only one situation was frustrating when I cut doors on the car body. Every time I changed the shape I had to cut the door again and again. A basic history based boolean would be nice. Similar than in Archicad. But I am still very satisfied next to Rhino, Viacad, Revit and Moi.

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@Marco - yes that's certainly correct that MoI is not focused on being a parametric modeler currently, but having said that it is certainly a valid wish for future versions. The tricky part is that often times in parametric modelers the process of defining the "recipe" for the model can dominate the workflow and I would like a history editing function that would be an optional thing instead. I have some ideas for this that I'd like to explore in the future but it will definitely be a lot of work involved.

@Max - I'm not really that fond of polls, I don't really get a good sense of what someone needs other than their top choice, and it's too easy for the top choice to be something requiring a massive effort that I won't be able to do in the current release. I'd recommend instead posting your top 5 wishes, when I see a lot of users posting similar lists then that helps give them more weight, and hopefully it's more likely that some of them would not be in the high development time category.

The best way to get your wish bumped up to high priority is to propose one that fits within the existing UI by extending some existing function in some way without needing to have a whole lot of new UI developed for it particularly at the top level.

- Michael

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Hi Micheal and good morning.

Thank you very much for your detailed and clear reply!

> "...I would like a history editing function that would be an optional thing instead.
I have some ideas for this that I'd like to explore in the future but it will definitely be a lot of work involved."

I totally agree with you that a good thing it would be to give the history feature as an optional and not invasive tool.
It's a very good news to hear from you that you're thinking about something regarding some sort of history for Moi.
It's the first time I hear it.
Thanks!

> "... I'd recommend instead posting your top 5 wishes..."

Hmmmm....it's a very hard work :) As you saw, my wishlist it's not so compact...I'm sorry.

> "The best way to get your wish bumped up to high priority is to propose one that fits within the existing UI by extending some existing function in some way without needing to have a whole lot of new UI developed for it particularly at the top level. "

Considering that, frankly speaking which point of my requests do you consider not feasible in the immediate future ?

1) Dimensioning, instancing, and grouping are all absolutely "wanted dead or alive"
2) At least some basic "surface-continuity" tools like "Zebra stripes" and "Environement Map" like Rhino
3) G3 and G4 continuity for blend tool !! At least G3.
4) Command for ContinueCurve and Merge curve (VERY IMPORTANT for me)
5) A revisited API interface with a complete access to Knot points, control points, curvature data.
6) It would be great if it were possible have these Rhino commands : MatchSrf, SelUV, MoveUVN, Cage and CageEdit
7) Better viewport rendering : ghosted mode, better anti-aliasing, line style for the edges
8) Display of IsoCurves
9) Export to AI and PDF with more customizable line styles.
And...newer CAD Kernel, for more robust Solid operations (Shelling, Offsetting, Filleting).

Thank you very much for your support and have a nice day!

---

Hi Marco, well that's an awfully long list that you've got there, v4 would take a really long time to come out if I tried to implement all those things in it. I'd hope to get at least some of those things but I have to prioritize and so I'd have to say things related to surfacing continuity, display modes, and surface control point editing are areas that are quite a bit more specialized in use than some of the other things.

The main goal for MoI is to try and make it quick and easy to build simple objects. Many of the tools you are asking for there such as G4 continuity for example are not really in line with that, so it's hard to give them very high priority. Maybe if I understood more details about how having a G4 blend instead of a G2 blend would solve a particular problem for you that could change things though.

I don't in general like to comment too much on wishlist posts because I don't really want to discourage others from posting about what they really want, and my priorities can change a lot if I see a pattern in many people asking for the same stuff. I will tend to comment though if someone posts just one wish saying they hope it will be in the next version but it's either not a good fit or would require a whole lot of work and so isn't too likely anytime soon - I just want to let them know that if some other program already handles what they are asking for they are probably better off using that other program for their work currently (so they can solve their problem and therefore make progress with their productivity) rather than trying to use MoI for something that it's not really designed to do.

One thing to keep in mind is that it's not really a goal for MoI to try and do every single task that's in every existing CAD program all added together. The main goal is more something like trying to take some of the most convenient areas of CAD and make them easier to access both in workflow, UI, and in lower learning curve. But these are rather fragile things and they can pretty easily be lost just simply by "feature bloat" of accumulating a large number of features that are not frequently used. So any new feature kind of starts out with a negative weight to it, and it gains in priority if it would make more people's jobs easier to do in some way. Also my time is fundamentally limited, so each feature comes at a cost - I mean if I'm working on one area it implicitly means some other feature is not getting worked on at that same time. So it tends to be good for me to work on areas that deliver the most "bang for the buck".

- Michael

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Michael I want to thank you for your quick and honest reply! Thanks a lot.

> " I mean if I'm working on one area it implicitly means some other feature is not getting worked on at that same time. So it tends to be good for me to work on areas that deliver the most "bang for the buck"."

I totally understand you about this point. As i told you some times ago I'm a (little) ISV and so I fully understand the problems regarding the limited time :)

Let me explain better...
Some of the features I'm asking for, are relative to the fact that I'm using almost exclusively Moi for my nurbs modelling,
while at the same time I also own RhinoV5 and V6 WIP.

But when I bought Rhino, I bought it only for some of its particular commands
(surface continuity, G3 G4 blend, UV point editing, cage, and some other stuff).

So it would be really great for me if Moi could give us these 4-5 features that Rhino has in order to get rid of Rhino,
because I don't love its UI and workflow and I see that in McNell they don't have any intention to change this thing.

I asked you about (at least) G3 blend because IMHO G2 it's not sufficient in some case for a good surface continuity.

Anyway, it's not my intention to bore you with tedious and long discourses,
so I'm confident that you will get all ours wish list and will do the best job!

Thanks for all and have a nice day Michael.

Ciao!

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Hi Marco, no problem!

re:
> So it would be really great for me if Moi could give us these 4-5 features that
> Rhino has in order to get rid of Rhino, because I don't love its UI and workflow and
> I see that in McNell they don't have any intention to change this thing.

I'm sorry but it's just not practical for me to make it a focus point on replicating specialized Rhino tools into MoI. The fundamental problem with a goal like that is that different people will have a different set of 4-5 features and all combined together you're then talking about an awful lot of features to add in.

It's really more the opposite in fact - because Rhino already has those specific features you need to use, and you can easily work with MoI and Rhino together, that actually makes it all the less of a priority for me to replicate them because you can solve your problem of accessing those features already at the current moment by using MoI and Rhino in combination with each other.

At this time it's still more of a priority for me to work on much more basic things than that in MoI. At some point in the future it could be possible for some of these fancier things to trickle in, but it just doesn't make much sense to focus my effort on G3 surface blends when I still don't have dimensions in MoI as of yet. There's still quite a lot of work left to do in widely used basic functions like that.


> I asked you about (at least) G3 blend because IMHO G2 it's not sufficient in some case
> for a good surface continuity.

Do you have any examples you could send to me? With G2 reflection lines are already smooth, G3 and G4 are getting into very esoteric properties that are difficult to perceive.

Thanks, - Michael

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