Hi LOTRJ,

> Thanks, scaling the model up as you suggested appears
> to have solved the problem.

That definitely means it is this problem I'm working on. But at least you can use that method to work around the problem for the moment.


> I'm looking forward to cleaner meshing in future versions!

I should have a new v2 beta with a fix pretty soon here, I'm kind of in the home stretch with a few last bug fixes to finish before releasing a new beta, maybe just a few more days left.

There has been a major overhaul for meshing in this next release - some bug fixes but mostly a huge increase in meshing speed, also it will take advantage of multiple cpu cores now. Also some major UI improvements - there is now a progress bar and you can alter the settings without waiting for the current mesh calculation to be finished, the calculation runs more in the background and if you change a setting the background calculation is automatically canceled and restarted with your new settings.

So pretty much the whole process of meshing will just be way smoother with this next release.

- Michael

Ditto on the easy origin picking comment! Before I was turning off all snaps except for the origin... :p

Hi Lars,

> I must have missed that one... Really, really convenient.

The other thing that I should mention is that if you want to type in a coordinate or value most of the time you don't need to click first.

Like if you are in the line command and you want to start a line at a particular coordinate value, just start typing that value and your keystrokes will automatically go into the xyz coordinate entry box without needing to click on it before that.

Or another example - if you are in the circle command at the step where you specify a radius, you can type in a numeric value and your keystrokes will automatically go into the Radius: edit box without actually needing a click on it first.

On a command that has more than one entry box, you can also use the [tab] key to commit the current value and move to the next field. So for example with the Rectangle command after you pick the corner point and you are at the stage where you can enter width and height, to type in a width of 5 and a height of 3, you can type: 5 [tab] 3 [enter], again with no clicks needed.

- Michael

>>New Mesher with speed and multi CPU support.
This is exciting!!! How do you think it will handle with 2 quad cores?? :) (of the Xeon type!)

Hard to believe your mesher can get better! But then again, you are "The Gibber"! (Sorry, couldnt resist)

Burr

Hi Burr,

> How do you think it will handle with 2 quad cores??
> :) (of the Xeon type!)

It should work great with that! I have not had a chance to test it myself with an 8-core system yet, but it is all set up to make use of how many every cores you have.

- Michael

How can we all sleep-----WAITING!

Brian

I'll let you know a couple day's after you release. I'm going to take my time setting the new system up properly before I dive in. Still waiting for delivery of the 30 inch blind guy's viewer!

I have a tire waiting to get rimmed because the old system was maxed with the rubber only.

Hi Burr, so are you custom building your new 8-core system?

Are you going to be using that Intel Skulltrail motherboard, or is there some kind of special server one that you are using?

I was glancing around recently for what it takes to make an 8-core system and there did not seem to be a whole lot of choices available yet.

- Michael

I had been researching the intel boards for the past few years (I am an Intel motherboard guy) and just came to the conclusion that I couldnt keep up with what would work well together. And with past experience of failure with dual processor builds, I put my trust in DELL. I bought a precision T7400. If you have any insight for me now would be the time. I hope it works well.

Hi Burr, it looks like a killer system!

I have not been really following every single detail of the latest CPUs to be able to give much specific advice...

I think it's a pretty good idea to just let DELL worry about having all compatible stuff put together for you, definitely saves a lot of potential problems!

I guess the only thing that is maybe not quite optimal is pricing - the Xeon should work great but they may be pretty expensive compared to the brand new Core i7. But I'm not sure if there is any way right now to set up a 2-socket Core i7 system to get 8 cores instead of only 4, that's why I was interested in what you were doing for that.

But actually I'm surprised that the DELL 8-core system is not really as expensive as I would have thought neither. It actually looks pretty good in that department overall as well,

- Michael

> How do you think it will handle with 2 quad cores??
> :) (of the Xeon type!)


I only have two cores :-(


But still, two is better than one :-)

Seems your more up than I . Didnt even know about a "Core i7" :) Maybe 4 core i7 is faster than my 8 core xeon?? (Thats usually what happens) still stuck in old core technology.

The I7 has four cores but they are hyper threaded so you get eight virtual cores. It's slower than actual double quad xeons but I am waiting for them to make dual cpu I7 boards so I can get 16 cores running in one box for under $4000. I too have a Dell with dual quad xeons and I can't wait to run mesh comparison times.

Hey. That means I will make models and renders "JUST LIKE GRENDEL!" :o

Wait just a biiiit longer and get the core 8! (Actual 8, not virtual)

Hi Grendel,

> I too have a Dell with dual quad xeons and I can't wait
> to run mesh comparison times.

I'll also add in a moi.ini switch that can be set to limit the mesher to only one thread, that would be good to get a benchmark of the new mesher with that limited as well to see how well it is scaling out to a higher number of cores.

There are also quite a lot of optimizations that improve just single-core meshing speed by a significant factor as well, so without a thread-limiter setting it won't be easy to know what factor is coming from multi-core and what is coming from the other optimizations.


It is possible for certain kinds of scalability problems to get magnified when the number of cores gets fairly large. I don't think that I should have much of that but it is hard to know for sure without actual testing on a higher number of cores, I have been testing mostly on quad core.

Are you using XP or Vista? There appears to be some tweaks in Vista to make a certain kind of multi-core scaling problem kind of go away ("lock convoys"), but I'm not quite sure right now how much that affects MoI in particular.

- Michael

I'm using XP 32-bit.

I'll run a comparison with just a straight v.1 mesh and a beta mesh with the multi-core mesher if that helps remove the intangibles.

Hi Grendel,

> I'll run a comparison with just a straight v.1 mesh
> and a beta mesh with the multi-core mesher if that
> helps remove the intangibles.

That would certainly be good to know too!

If you could do 3 tests it would help to get the full picture though.

One with version 1.0, another with the new mesher running full out, and a last one with the new mesher limited to 1 thread (by a special moi.ini setting enabled).

Almost ready, I think I've got the meshing all wrapped up now and I just need to clear a list of some other bugs first before releasing. Maybe a couple of days.

- Michael

No problem Michael three tests

Hi Michael....

> Maybe a couple of days.
I think you will release the next beta at Jan 21, 2009.
Base on the history, you like to release at 21 :)

Hi Anis, yes it is funny how it has been working out to be the 21st several times now! :)

This time I think probably before that though.

- Michael