Great product Michael...very intuitive

But coming from a rhino background I do have to say that the snapping system remains a bit of a mystery to me.
Here's my problem. I just created a U-shaped curve, and I turned points on. After I move some points around, I decide I want to move a point to be tangent with the adjecent points (the one before and the one after it). There's no way to do this, even with the object snap turned on.
How do I reference the points so that I can move my point to be tangent with those two?

I think Im beginning to get it...construction lines...cool

Hi niko, you'll need to use the Move command for that particular case of wanting to move a curve control point while referencing other curve control points.

While dragging curve control points, snapping to other points on the same curve is suppressed. Otherwise it is too easy for points to kind of stick together and cause points to get doubled up over top of one another.

However if you use the Move command instead, that will allow for snapping on to curve control points so it should do what you want.


To make a point be positioned in a straight line between 2 other points, you can create a construction line by clicking on one point and dragging and releasing on the other point. That will form a temporary construction line you can use to snap on to.

Here's a quick screencap to illustrate:



The key thing in there is the creation of the construction line - again that is done by clicking and holding down the mouse button where you want to place the start point of the line, and dragging away, and then releasing on the end point.

That forms a construction line which is a very useful snapping guide for all kinds of operations, you can use it for extensions, intersections, finding the midpoint between any 2 points, capturing a distance and positioning it elsewhere, snapping to intervals like 1/5 between any 2 points, pulling points up in z while in the 3D view, mirroring points around an axis line, etc...

For more details on what is possible with construction lines, see here:
http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/moi_command_reference10.htm#constructionlines

That's kind of a key thing to get used to in MoI to get the most out of its snapping system. Once you get used to it, I think you'll see how powerful it is. Another really nice thing about it is that it stays out of your way completely until you specifically call on it with that "hold and drag" gesture.

- Michael

Hi niko, looks like you figured it out while I wrote my reply! :)

Construction lines only activate when you do the mouse drag gesture to activate them, so it is not quite as easy to find out about them without looking at a tutorial video or the documentation.

That's kind of a side effect of them staying out of your way until you specifically call on them.

The systems that activate by just hovering over a point are more discoverable by just messing around, but they have a bad side effect of triggering rather too easily and filling up the workspace with quite a lot of snap zones. When your whole screen gets filled with snap zones it can tend to cause a problem where you can no longer make fine adjustments to points in a freeform manner.

- Michael

Hi niko, also there is another thing coming in v2 (it is in the current v2 beta) that is kind of related which you may be interested in, which is the ability to use the edit frame to "flatten" a set of points and manipulate them:



If you mostly care about getting those points in a line and not so much about keeping the outer 2 ones in exactly the same spot, then this method would work well for that. The cool thing about this method is that it is just always available to you by using the edit frame grips within the viewport, you don't have to fire up a command to do it.

- Michael

Very precise and of course you can see the angle rotation in the Screen Bottom angle box!

And you can use it for a volume primitive object! ;)

Hi Niko,

I use this construction line script (a LOT) from Paul (AIRGLASS).

see this thread:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1029.1


Allows me to setup a shape, or set of snap points with persistent construction lines. Although the standard 'on the fly' construction line is okay for quickies, I'm a lot more comfortable with this way of doing things.


Michael,

I hope you don't add anything that breaks this script :-)

Thanks guys!!