Hi Michael,

>>Updated Circle and Arc Tangent commands

It works fine in 2D But not in 3D

That's not your fault because i didn't mention it
Maybe next time

Compliments on this v2 beta update

I Michael, I have a little .3dm v4 file related problem.
I try Rhino 4 for texture and render a moi shape. Rhino ask me to save in v4 because v3 it's obsolete. I can open it again with moi, but if I change something and save it I lose all the material information. It's going to change with the next beta or we have to take care about this and don't save back in moi?

Thanks
Luca

Hi Paolo,

> It works fine in 2D But not in 3D

Yes, it is generally the case that these kinds of tangent constructions only work on objects all in the same plane...

For curves that are all going in different directions in 3D, as far as I can tell there will not likely be any solution to be found for a circle tangent to all 3 3D curves simultaneously.

Maybe I don't understand your situation though, can you please post a model file with some 3D curves in it that you would have expected to work so I can take a look?

> Compliments on this v2 beta update

Thank you!

- Michael

Hi Luca,

> It's going to change with the next beta or we have to take
> care about this and don't save back in moi?

I'm not quite sure yet how much this will change right away, it is possible that I will only be able to handle some of the basic information at first such as object color and not really full materials for a while yet.

But I will try to keep that in mind though.

- Michael

Hi Michael, I don't intend to handle all the material information, but maybe not "broken" the information already in place.

Thanks
Luca

Hi Luca, do you have an example file that you could send to me?

That would help to test with and to see what I could do to preserve it.

Right now I am not sure how difficult that would be.

- Michael

I'll send you this evening, no problem.

Bye
Luca

By the way, has anyone had a chance to test the new FBX format export into 3DS Max to see if it does provide a better quality data transfer as expected?

It should be able to get n-gons and the vertex normal shading information across.

Please let me know if you have run into any problems with it or if it seems to be working well.

- Michael

Michael I just tested it for you on a somewhat complex model.
I exported to FBX (ngon option) and imported into Max 9

For some reason all my materials in Max looks like the gamma has been turned up or self illuminated (is that the vertex normal shading ? )
>>>> edit: (i figured out what this is the ambient color of the environment panel needs to be set to black instead of mid gray which happens during fbx import).

I did get quite a few polygon errors around the boolean cutouts. It seems to have double polygons in this area with one the right way and another flipped.

The mesh generated also seems to have 3 times the amount vertex's it needs which can fixed in max by selecting all verts and weld (after setting your tolerancing factor accordingly).

Also the model comes in faceted so the user would have to apply smoothing groups inside max.

The ngon option makes for a neater mesh and will make uv mapping a lot easier when it comes time to break the model into pieces.

Hi Michael

Just a little question about SketchUp Exporter. If you export only curves, you get nothing (Export don't work). If you include a solid or surface (s), in SketchUp you get the meshes but not the single curves.

Thanks,



George

Hi George, thanks for reporting that - yes the exporter does not handle curves at all, only surface data.

- Michael

Hi Kevin, thanks for testing the FBX!

I believe that Max 9 is older than the current Max version which is Max 2009, is that correct?

I think that for Max 9 you need to update its FBX importer plug-in to the newest version to get rid of some of these problems, you can get the FBX plug-in here:
http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/mform?siteID=123112&id=10775855

Sorry I forgot to mention that earlier.

- Michael

>I believe that Max 9 is older than the current Max version which is Max 2009, is that correct?
Yep, since Max 9 there has been Max 2008 and Max 2009. So Max 9 is approx 2 yrs old.

Thanks for the link, I'll give the plugin a try and let you know if that gives a better result.

I'm not having any luck with the .fbx meshes from MoI in 3ds Max Design 2009. It loads in without any problems, and it looks great...no errors, the mesh looks exactly the same as in MoI. However, when I try to render it crashes 3ds Max. I say it crashes, in reality 3ds Max simply disappears from my desktop. This issue only happens when I try to render an imported .fbx file from MoI.

Jeff

Maybe just save the file in MAx format, reload it and render? ;)

Hi Michael,

>> all in the same plane...

I got it work with some extra steps as you can see in the image
So it is possible in MOI3D

The other images are juwellery with a fasten method called 'Pavee'
(french for paving), and i use TangentSnapping to find a center-
point between 3 points

>>there will not likely be any solution
It's not a real problem,but if you find it i'll be happy

Hi Jeff, thanks for testing the FBX into Max Design 2009

> However, when I try to render it crashes 3ds Max. I say
> it crashes, in reality 3ds Max simply disappears from my
> desktop. This issue only happens when I try to render an
> imported .fbx file from MoI.

Well that's kind of a bummer!

Can you test one thing please - when you export from MoI click the little arrow in the lower-left corner of the Meshing options dialog and try one version with "Weld vertices along edges" turned off and one with it turned on.

Does it only crash with the welding in a certain state, such as when it is turned on?

- Michael

Hi Paolo,

> It's not a real problem,but if you find it i'll be happy

Can you please post a .3dm file with just those 3 cylinder pieces in it that you want to find the shared tangent between?

I'll take a look at it and see if I can make it do that or not.

It really helps a lot if you can post .3dm model files of your objects instead of just screenshots - I can't test directly with a screenshot but I can test directly with a .3dm file.

- Michael

Ok Michael,

Here they are,

One note:
On the ring Ove05.3dm the stones and Cylinders
are placed randomly (for learning practice)

Hi Paolo, thanks for posting the model data.

I do not believe that there is any true tangent solution possible to the situation you originally wanted between the cylinder end edges, since those 3 end circles of the cylinders are all in different planes.

I can see that Rhino gives you a solution anyway, however it is not really a fully correct solution, if you actually examine the result that you got in your bal7B.3dm file, you can see that those circles have a deviation between their tangents of about 1.5 degrees.

You can examine that by putting in some trimming lines like so:



Then slice your circles into arcs and run Rhino's gcon command:



The gcon command tells you that they are G1 since the error is below the default 3 degree angle tolerance in Rhino. However, that deviation of 1.5 degrees seems to be a pretty significant amount, I'm not really very comfortable with making a "solution" like that where there is no real solution available.


The other method that you showed is different - by framing your problem all in a single plane you have an actual legitimate solution in the other construction that you showed.

- Michael