Hello,

Just purchased Moi last night and have been tinkering with it today. I have a few questions.

I have a need to scale an entire object while keeping the aspect locked while using a portion of the object as the guide to scale. For example, I have an SMA connector that I need to scale larger a bit but want the entire assembly to scale along with it in size. Is this possible to do in Moi?

Also, does Moi have Space Navigator support?

Finally, I must say the import/export of models is great with Moi. It is well worth the price to me just for that, not to mention its speed and STEP load times, and the ability to quickly separate models to clean up in Moi before export, then the excellent meshing.

I tested the AI export and it is very good, except for the inability to render certain edges the model in 3D view. If this could make it into v.3 it would cut my time down immensely and would make Moi my only 3D package. I know from previous discussion that doing this is not a simple task, and may in fact have limited value to the user community. Right now I import STEP models into Moi, export to SketchUP, clean up the mesh, use Layout to create the line drawings in isometric view (can Moi export isometric AI?) and then export EPS to Corel where I then spend time joining line segments, converting to curves and simplifying the points. At that point it is published to PDF.

Ideally I would like to import STEP to Moi, do cleanup in Moi, export AI from Moi, and since the AI export from Moi exports curves instead of thousands of line segments that need to be joined, converted to a curve and simplified in Corel my time to complete the task is decreased by at least 50%.

Don't get me wrong, I can live with the benefits of Moi as it stands, it is worth every penny of $295 for my need, the rest is just icing on the cake. Thanks.

< Space Navigator
Yes! Very cool isn't it ;)
Go to Options / View/ Button Rotate Pan Zoom options

Hello Frenchy Pilou,

Thanks for the quick response. Also nice to see good support for the device. It is a great time saver when cleaning up models.

Also some guy's were just demonstrating Adobe pro exteneded's ability to import 3d models and share them.

Hi OSTexo,

> I have a need to scale an entire object while keeping the
> aspect locked while using a portion of the object as the
> guide to scale. For example, I have an SMA connector that
> I need to scale larger a bit but want the entire assembly
> to scale along with it in size. Is this possible to do in Moi?

Yup, you can just use the Transform/Scale command to do that.

There are 3 sub varieties of scaling available under there, the plain "Scale", then "Scale 2D", and "Scale 1D".

For maintaining a locked aspect ratio you want the first one, which does a uniform scale in all directions. The other ones scale either in 2D leaving the z alone, or only in one direction for Scale1D.

During the scale command you can either enter in a scale factor, or you can pick points on your model which allows you to scale based on reference points on your model.

The help file section for Scale goes over this in some detail with some step-by-step screenshots:
http://moi3d.com/1.0/docs/moi_command_reference8.htm#scale

In v2 there is also a new "edit frame" available for scaling, which you can use for quick scaling tasks. But use the Transform/Scale command instead if you want to scale by referencing particular points in the model.


> Also, does Moi have Space Navigator support?

Yup, just use it when you are running MoI, you don't need to do anything special to set it up.

There are a variety of options for adjusting its behavior under Options / View / Rotate/Pan/Zoom options, there is a section on the right there for "3Dconnexion options".


re: Export to AI

Yeah I think the major missing functionality here is that only existing edges are exported, it will not generate things like silhouettes.

I do want to beef this area up in the future though, hopefully in v3 I will be able to add in curve generation for making proper hidden-line views.


- Michael