A new v2 beta is available for download here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm

You will need to enter your v1 license key to download the v2 beta.

The v2 beta installs into its own folder, it is not a problem to have v1 and any v2 beta installed on the same machine, in fact I recommend that so that you can fall back to v1 if you run into some temporary bad bug in v2.


New stuff for this version:

FBX format export - it looks like this will be the preferred format for moving data from MoI into 3DS Max.

SketchUP SKP format export.

CPlane tool (under the View palette) for setting the drawing plane. This allows you to align the drawing plane to more easily work on objects that are not aligned to the normal world axes. I'll try to post some more details about this later, it still is not quite completely finished yet.

Added Drag and Drop support - you can now drag and drop one or more files from Windows Explorer on to the MoI window. If a file is already open MoI will pop up a dialog asking if you want to Open the file or Merge the file with the existing data.
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1886.15

Updated the Text command to show a dynamic wireframe preview of the 3D text as you type or change options.
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1898.13

Updated Circle and Arc Tangent commands - it is now possible to get a circle or arc tangent to 3 curves and also tangent to 2 curves through an existing point, in addition to v1's method of tangent to 2 curves of a specified radius.
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1899.3

New Align tool for background images to make it easier to do image registration to line up a line in an image with a line in the model:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1982.9


New options for adjusting MoI's behavior:


New Rotation style option under Options / View / Rotate/Pan/Zoom options / Rotation style. Can be switched between Rotate around world z axis, or Free rotation. If you prefer a more "object focused" style of rotation then try switching this to "Free rotation" to see if that is more comfortable for you.

Options / View / Show view controls - can be unchecked to disable Zoom/Pan/Rotate controls at the bottom of viewports.

Options / View / 3D view projection - allows switching the 3D view between Perspective or Parallel projection modes.

Link ortho views option under Options / View / Rotate/Pan/Zoom options - when enabled the ortho views will be synchronized with each other when you zoom or pan so that they all stay focused on the same spot.

Axis labels option - under Options / View / Axis labels - allows you to change which axis is labled as x, y, and z. If you are more comfortable working in a y-up and z-forward type system, you can set it up like that as described here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1887.13

Option for controlling wither IGES file import will try to join surfaces into solids -
Options / Import/Export / IGES options / Join surfaces on import.



Fixed a bug with face extrusion where seam edges were being extruded as well when they shouldn't be. http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1934.7

Updated face extrusion - if extruding a single surface then the surface is consumed instead of keeping it around as a separate object in addition to the generated solid.



Network surface construction - updated to use a relative tolerance so it can work better
with larger sized input curves.

AI import tuneup - unit system scale should now be preserved when importing an AI file if you have set your unit system to be either inches, cm, or mm before you import
the file. Otherwise it is scaled by 1/20 from the native AI units to make it just a reasonable size.


moi.ini stuff:

[Commands]
DoNotRepeatShortcutKeys=n

Can be switched to =y to make commands that were triggered by keyboard shortcuts to be ignored by the right-click repeat.

[View]
AxisIconPixelSize=30
Controls the size of the spokes of the optional axis icon that can be displayed in the lower-left corner of a viewport.



New scripting stuff


New methods on a brep getJoinedEdges(), getNakedEdges() and getSeamEdges() which can be
used to retrieve an object list of those particular kinds of edges of an object. This now enables using this keyboard shortcut to highlight all edges that are not joined:
script:var gd = moi.geometryDatabase; gd.deselectAll(); var breps = gd.getObjects().getBreps(); for ( var i = 0; i < breps.length; ++i ) breps.item(i).getNakedEdges().setProperty( 'selected', true );


Fixed some bugs with tab key handling.

Made the CLine menu launcher tag be activated by a right-click in addition to the click-and-hold method.

Some other various minor bug fixes.


Please let me know if you run into any problems!

- Michael

thanks for the beta update michael,

many thanks especially for including the requested feature regarding background images!

Great work as always!

Thanks,
Thanks ,

Marcorhino (Marco)

Tank for all ;-)

Thanks Michael, giving it a whirl right now.

Cheers

Thank you, Michael. 'SKP format export' works like a charm.

Hi Michael,

Had a preliminary run for about an hour and just some comments on some of the new stuff.

The Free Rotation option with a spaceball is like, getting rid of my crutches and I'm finally walking normal again, thanks for that Doc :)

Naked edges, fantastic! works great !

Circle and arc tangent command update, where has that been!? ;)

CPlane IMHO is one of the major updates in modelling tools added, it will make modelling life so much easier again, I thought MoI couldn't get any easier and the placement intelligence behind it makes it so quick.

One thing with CPlane Michael, is that when using construction line/helpers to set the new plane the helper lines tend to hang around for a while, then they disappear after a few more commands, was this intended ?

Apart from that, all is good so far :)

Cheers

Hi Michael,

Really nice this new beta, love the Cplane function!

However I have problems with the SketchUp exporter.
I get a message that there is something wrong with the geometry when I open the file (I use SketchUp Pro version 6.4.112).
I`ve attached the 3dm file.
It is just a box and a 3pt curve that have been extruded and shelled, and later filleted.

Is it a user fault or is it a bug?
I used the default meshing option, and tried both weld edges and not.

Eric

Oh thank you Michael,

will try that tonight

Cold

no problem for me except these 2 faces missing! (up & down)
file skp linked

Hi Michael
tanks for these improvements
I hope that you remenber -Isocurve- for the next beta .....
al

thanks, Michael

..................and "group and ungroup objects" !!!!

Marcorhino

Thanks Michael ...

I sure know how I am going to spend my evening, too.

Great program with great future promise.

eric

Hi French Pilou,

Did you get the a warning that there is a problem with the model?

I get the same holes as your attachement just more of them.

See attached jpg.

No message for me ;)
Google Sketchup free 6.4.112

new try
Now I have made that
Erase the Up and down facetts rounded
then select for up and down the outlined internal then Planar = only one "facet" for each up & down
Export SKP
Result :in Sketchup all is fine except the Uper face is inversed so inverse it and all is fine

Are you sure of the construction of your Cylinder?

Hi Danny, thanks for the feedback!

> The Free Rotation option with a spaceball is like,
> getting rid of my crutches and I'm finally walking
> normal again, thanks for that Doc :)

I thought that would be more comfortable for you! :)


> CPlane IMHO is one of the major updates in modelling
> tools added, it will make modelling life so much easier
> again, I thought MoI couldn't get any easier and the
> placement intelligence behind it makes it so quick.

Great, I'm glad that the placement mechanism is working well for you.

Yeah when you place its origin point it will try to automatically align itself to the object you snapped on to. Hopefully for most situations that will be the orientation you were looking for already and you can be done right there.

But after the initial placement you can also click and drag on the axis lines to get a kind of "align to 3 points manually" type of style as well. After you have placed one axis, it will behave a bit differently for the 2nd axis drag - the first axis that you dragged will stay locked in place and the next pick will rotate about that first locked axis. This can be a bit strange if you are just trying to play around with dragging axes around because every other drag behaves a bit differently, but it should make sense I think if you are focused on placing them by 2 picks after placing the origin.


Then the idea is that this same placement mechanism will also be used for a Transform/Orient tool for aligning objects to one another - that one will use 2 of those tripod pickers, one for a base orientation on the object and then one for the target orientation.


> One thing with CPlane Michael, is that when using
> construction line/helpers to set the new plane the helper
> lines tend to hang around for a while, then they disappear
> after a few more commands, was this intended ?

Oops, that's a bug, thanks for reporting it. Should be easy to fix.

It's kind of a side effect of CPlane not really being a regular "Command" - one reason why it is not a regular command is so that you can actually use it while you are running inside of a command already.

- Michael

Hi Eric, thanks for reporting the SketchUp problem.

> Is it a user fault or is it a bug?
> I used the default meshing option, and tried both weld edges and not.

It looks like a bug, it will take a bit of examining to see what the problem is, thanks for posting the example file.

One thing you can do right now to tune this up is to alter the model a bit. Right now the top planar face of your curved piece looks like it came from a sweep:



If you delete that top face (and the matching one on the bottom), then select the object that now has open ends, and then run the Construct / Planar command, it will create caps that are made up of simple 4-point planes that have been trimmed to that outline. Simple plane surfaces like that will export better to Skp format, it will become just one single face in the .skp file. (EDIT: same thing that Pilou mentions above)


Another thing is that SketchUp does not seem to like very long and skinny triangles very much, you may get some problems or also just a generally rough look to your model if there are very thin triangles in it, such as in this area:



There are some meshing settings that you can adjust to try and reduce that. One relatively easy way to tune it up is to enter in a value for Aspect ratio limit. Here I entered a value of 6 in there, which will subdivide polygons that have a long side more than 6 times the length of the smaller side. That results in this kind of a mesh structure instead:



Unfortunately that will also drive the polygon count up quite a bit as well and SketchUp is also kind of sensitive to that as well, so it isn't automatically always better to do this. But if you want a smoother look to shapes in SketchUp it can help.

Here is the result in SketchUp with simple plane caps and reduced skinny triangles:



I will be looking at your example file today though to see if I can find out where the problem is, it is probably something like SketchUp not liking to have duplicated points or points that are too close to each other in a polygon outline.

Unfortunately SketchUp is rather more sensitive to how its polygons are arranged than a typical polygon modeling program. It may take a few passes to identify situations that it does not like to handle.

- Michael

Thanks for the tips Michael and French Pilou :)

I will remember this for my exports.

This was just a test (don`t really use SketchUp that much any more, sad but true).
I usually tweak my mesh exports, but didn`t bother this time, just wanted so check out the export function.

By the way, the curved object was not a swept curve.
I made it with the 3pts arch, extruded the curve, used shell, and then fillet on the edges.

I think this may be a SketchUp issue rather than a Moi issue.
The reason for this is that in the past when I imported geometry from other software (mainly acad/revit) there was always a lot of "cleaning" to do.
Must be some kind of tolerance/precision setting if I remember correctly, I got different results when I played with these settings.
Almost all the models and 2d plans were useless to model with, and I ended up just using them as guides/references.

Anyway, love the new options/functions, can`t wait to see the object organizer!

Thanks again for a killer app and support!


Eric

Hi Eric - it is definitely a big goal for MoI's exporters to try and eliminate the amount of tweaking and cleaning that has to be done.

It just saves a huge amount of time if the export is all clean right from the beginning instead of needing further work.

Of course with the very first release of a brand new exporter there may be a few issues to discover and tune up. It certainly helps a lot when I have an example to work with, thanks for posting it!

I've looked into that example and the problem is actually what I had guessed earlier - SketchUp does not like it when points of a polygon are too close together, it looks like when points of a polygon are closer than 0.001 units together it will cause SketchUp to flag the face as badly formed. That happens to be the case in some of those polygons along the top because the UV grid of the fillet is just a little bit different than the UV grid of that top flat piece. So when these 2 UV grids get combined to have a "watertight" outline for the polygon it has some points in it pretty close together.

For the next beta I will be able to solve this problem by merging points like that together.


> I think this may be a SketchUp issue rather than a Moi issue.

I guess so, actually I'm kind of surprised that it is sensitive to this amount of closeness, I would have thought it would have had to be a smaller distance for it to be a problem.

But anyway I'll be able to solve it in MoI's SKP exporter to not create this situation that SketchUp does not happen to like.

- Michael