Full Version: V5 Wish List

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Hello Michael,

Is it possible to have the following ability (or do we have it currently) :

To be able to have control points of a curve duplicated by holding Ctrl/Command key. (If I want to elaborate on it better I would say please take a look at the attached image. in the image you can see a circle with half of its control points selected I would like to be able to duplicate those selected control points and adjust the shape of the curve by moving selected control points to the right side getting the second curve u see below the circle) (I imagine this could be helpful because it works even faster in some cases) (and it is just a thought)

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Maybe Flow function can do that again... ?

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Extrude with Set Path looks promising, with a semicircle as initial curve.
A few additional steps would be needed...
Maybe a short script could be done...

- Brian

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Hi Psygorn,

re:
> To be able to have control points of a curve duplicated by holding Ctrl/Command key.

Currently if you hold down the Ctrl key when you drag on an object it will drag a copy of the object, including if you drag control points.

- Michael

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Hi Michael,

Yes I just thought out loud ( just thought this could open a fast way to manipulate curve shapes for example turning a circle into a pill shape ) Just a thought!

and maybe my explanation was not good I meant I just want control points to be copied. Currently when we Ctrl+drag the control points the curve is also copied with them.

It was just a thought dear Michael. I apologize if it sounds absurd! sorry.

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Hi bemfarmer,

I meant I wish I could only duplicate control points when holding Ctrl+drag on them. and I thought maybe with this ability (being able to copy only control points then we could be able to manipulate curves shapes with more speed.
For example imagine u could create pillshape just by selecting half of the control points of a circle and drag them to another side. It was just a thought!

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Hi Psygorn,

re:
> and maybe my explanation was not good I meant I just want control points to be copied. Currently
> when we Ctrl+drag the control points the curve is also copied with them.
>
> It was just a thought dear Michael. I apologize if it sounds absurd! sorry.

Hmmm, well looking more closely at your example it looks like only 2 of the points out of the ones you selected are copied:




Then there are 4 completely new points inserted that do not correspond to any previous point, so those are not really "copies":




I'm sorry but it would be pretty strange to have a dedicated keyboard shortcut that would copy only some of the current selected points, not all of them, and then additionally insert new points that work just for this one very specific case of making a pill shape.

In the future I do want to add some symmetry editing tools, maybe those would help with this particular case as well.

- Michael

Image Attachments:
psygorn_control_points1.jpg  psygorn_control_points2.jpg 

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Ah ok, Tanx :)

Edit: Dear Michael, I did the following to make pill shape -> Trimmed a Circle put a distance between the produced semi circles and then connected them with two lines and joined them I guess that is why there are more points. However, while I was doing it I thought if we could just select half of the control points and then drag them to another side while holding down control and ending up with the pill shape we could have a faster work fellow. I thought this Idea is aligned with the philosophy behind MOI3D which is "Speed". But now I think I need to apologize maybe my idea is not a good one! sorry! and thank you for your time. :-)

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Hi Psygorn, no problem. But yes the trim does end up inserting some key points to make a result that keeps the circular shape intact.

If you just tried to move control points alone it's not going to be very feasible to get a result that has shaping of exact circular arcs connected by straight lines.

Instead of straight lines it's going to be kind of smoothed out something like this:



re:
> I thought this Idea is aligned with the philosophy behind MOI3D which is "Speed".

It's true that is an important thing. But another part to the philosophy behind MOI3D is to try and keep things streamlined and simple to use and avoid "bloat".

Too many special functions that are used just in really specific cases can end up crowding the UI so much that it becomes more difficult to use overall.

So it would help if there were other kinds of situations where something like that would be useful.

If it's only useful for making pills then the anti-bloat philosophy means that it's preferable to use a combination of existing general purpose tools to make it just like you did use.

Thanks,
- Michael

Image Attachments:
psygorn_control_points3.jpg 

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A Christmas puzzle for Michael?

What about a “nearest neighbor" GeomObject method: given a vector for direction and an optional distance limit, the method would return the next GeomObject along the vector within the limit.

An example use case would be a script modifying a stack of objects where it is inconvenient to select the objects in advance but the user could supply a distance tolerance. The objects may be immediately adjacent to one another or there may be gaps and this would be left to the calling script to control.

An alternative process, using existing capabilities is to use a line and intersect, but that has challenges and limitations. A nearest neighbor method would create possibilities for scripts to examine the model environment. I have no idea of the effort required to implement such a method, but offer it as an idea for your consideration.

Merry Christmas and THANK YOU for MoI, it is a delightful tool!

--Larry

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Hi Larry,

re:
> An alternative process, using existing capabilities is to use a line and intersect, but
> that has challenges and limitations.

Could you describe what the challenges and limitations would be?

- Michael

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Hi Michael,

> Could you describe what the challenges and limitations would be?

The challenge is primarily complexity of the script as it is trying to knit together an understanding of the model it is working on and only do a limited set of operations. One limitation is if the list of objects fed to the intersect is too broad there may be other intersections that generate points which are unrelated & this would lead toward more complexity to eliminate those points. There may be other issues I’ve not tripped over yet...

So for example, see the attached model. The structure on the right represents a building with ICF (insulated concrete form) walls which are poured. The concrete in the 4 walls is represented as a single solid and I represented the foam insulation layers in the same way. There are also solids representing drywall on the inside and siding on the outside. The goal is to cut and frame a single window on one side. To do that one needs to select only the faces that are to be cut rather than simply selecting all the wall components. The process of manually selecting only the faces associated with one wall with the UI is cumbersome and would ideally be done by the script. My script currently uses the subset boolean difference that you suggested earlier and therefore cuts windows on both sides of the building if the entire wall structure is selected (which is the result that is currently shown).

I believe I can identify the necessary faces per Peer's suggestion of using using BRep’s dropPoint(). https://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=10907.5

So, to try this, draw a normal line through the wall where the window is to be cut. Then intersect the line and all the wall components. In my model the only points that result are those where the normal intersects the faces of the solids, other models might have other points. Using the points that result, I think the approach is to use dropPoint() on each BRep and then get the face from the first element of the list that is returned, then process more or less as the script is currently written. I say I think only because I’ve not gotten it working yet, but I think I can.

One of the things that I take away from looking at the scripts you include with MoI is their simplicity and elegance: many are just bits of glue that tie the UI to the various factories. Thus when my script begins to get cumbersome and I’m fumbling around trying to accomplish something, I tend to question my approach. Is there a simpler way? Hence the idea of a “nearest neighbor” GeomObject method.

If such a method existed, I would imagine that it would find and return the lowest (most elemental) objects. In this case I would imagine that it would return the nearest face intersecting the vector & from there I could build up the list of faces via subsequent calls and then do the subset boolean difference. The idea struck me as one that might also be useful for other tasks where UI selection is inconvenient, and therefore a generalized tool that would benefit the script environment.

--Larry

Attachments:
Walls and windows.3dm

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Hi Larry,

re:
> One limitation is if the list of objects fed to the intersect is too broad there may be other
> intersections that generate points which are unrelated & this would lead toward more
> complexity to eliminate those points.

Ok, but how do you want me to implement the "nearest neighbor GeomObject method" without running into these very same issues?

At some point I would like to have an option when you're booleaning a solid with a planar curve to look at the results and only keep the cut that was closest to the curve, sort of like an automatic subset. Maybe that would help but I'm not sure when I'll be making that.

- Michael

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Hi Michael,

> Ok, but how do you want me to implement the "nearest neighbor GeomObject method" without running into these very same issues?

Since I don’t know much of anything about the data structures that hold the model in memory, I only have an approximate idea of how one might implement a nearest neighbor method. I infer from your question though that you'd approach it in a way similar to the intersection of the line and other objects. The image I had was of the vector acting like a sort of laser "probe" which would only illuminate the object being intersected: an intersect with a priority. In other words, the vector in the intersect operation acts to select the objects rather than the intersect returning all intersections across all objects within the set. The distance component of the vector would further limit the set of objects. The method would ultimately return the object closest to the vector's origin.

The "cut closest to the curve" part of your idea might be along similar lines.

--Larry

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Hi Larry,

re:
> The image I had was of the vector acting like a sort of laser "probe" which would only
> illuminate the object being intersected: an intersect with a priority. In other words,

There are methods like what you describe here used for raytracing renderers.

It's possible to create a type of hierarchical bounding structure around objects such that if the ray intersects an object inside one node of the bounding structure it can know that objects contained in some other further away nodes within the structure do not need to be searched.

But I don't have anything for that already prepared and there is quite a lot of work involved in setting it up and making sure it works properly.


> The "cut closest to the curve" part of your idea might be along similar lines.

It will probably be implemented fairly different from that. Probably something more like it will generate all candidate holes and then only select one to actually use.

- Michael

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Hi Michael,

I often wish that I could edit vector graphics in MoI because it has geometric drawing tools that don't exist in graphics editors. I do this a little now, but it's arduous because the layout and layer/group structure of an SVG/AI get destroyed by being imported into MoI and then exported out again as SVG/AI. I end up having to import only 1 layer or group at a time into MoI and then use fiducial marks to get things registered again in a graphics editor.

Keeping some layer or group structure is needed so that things like stroke weight, color, dashes, fills, etc. can be set again when back in a vector graphics editor.

Maintaining layout relative to a page boundary is needed so that layout and dimensions don't change visually or for printing and also to make copy-pasting between vector files easy without going through an alignment and scaling step each time.

It looks like this sort of thing has been discussed before:

http://moi3d.com/forum/lmessages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=9889.3

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=10774.55

Getting this working probably won't be easy, but it would shave off a bunch of tedious work.

If anyone has figured out a streamlined workflow for editing vector graphics in MoI I'd love to hear about it.

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Hi Peer,

re:
> <....>
> Maintaining layout relative to a page boundary is needed

Unfortunately there is a vast amount of work that would be needed to manage a "paper space" environment inside of MoI. I don't expect for that to happen anytime soon, perhaps never.

In general it will work better using MoI alongside a 2D vector graphics program if the data flow is more unidirectional, like you're mainly bringing data from 2D vector graphics into MoI or creating it in MoI and sending it to the vector graphics program. Frequently ping-ponging the same data back and forth is not very workable.

- Michael

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Hi Michael,

Thank you for giving a definitive answer.

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Hi Michael,

Having closed paths is critical to several common tasks in technical illustration:

1. Closed outline curve so that the outline stroke can be aligned to the outside of the path rather than along center. This avoids having a thick outline overlap the inside of an object which is important when there are fine details along the outline.
2. Hatching clipping mask like for adding a hatch pattern to indicate that a face has been cut by a cross section plane
3. Fills such as block shading like this example:
   
   https://moi3d.com/forum/lmessages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=10770.1
   
   which was made by hand in a vector graphics editor by drawing closed curves and then filling them.
   

Needing closed paths has come up before:

https://technicalillustrators.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=211&start=7

http://moi3d.com/forum/lmessages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6201.61

I've tried out a bunch of different ways of getting from the MoI's SVG/AI output to closed paths, but have found that Illustrator's Live Paint is the only one that works reliably. Several other vector graphics editors claim to have this capability, but they aren't reliable on MoI's vector output because of tiny geometry problems that are essentially invisible. Inkscape is reliable, but sometimes leaves a gap between the closed shape and the line art, and has other problems.

So, it would be helpful if another layer were added to MoI's SVG/AI output. This layer would contain nothing but closed paths.

A few approaches that might work:

• GMIC colorize line art: https://www.davidrevoy.com/article324/smart-coloring-preview-of-a-new-gmic-filter
• Expand strokes into filled shapes, boolean union, extract the resulting closed curves, and then offset them to give some bleed
• Rasterization followed by vectorization like Inkscape “Fill Bounded Area” followed by offsetting to give some bleed. But there are problems with this: https://wiki.inkscape.org/wiki/index.php/A_better_Bucket_Fill_tool_fill

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And something like Affinity Designer (low cost) who reload without problem PDF format from Moi3D ?

In any 3D position in the 3D Space inside Moi!

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