Another great video! When I can make that cell phone I'll consider myself an expert :)

The nice thing about videos is they tie all the tools together. It's one thing to know what a tool does, it's another to see how it gets used.

I'd like to see someone produce a series of videos, with audio, that go slower and concentrate on just one or two techniques at a time. Then newbies like me can absorb one lesson at a time before moving on. Sort of a "MoI for Dummies" in video format.

Ed
Seattle, WA

Hello lyes:

Thank you very much for share your skills with us.
Great video tutorial.

Hi lyes,

> Hi Michael is it possible to make center point off circle and
> arc visible when selected and move them from the center
> without calling move command

I do want to give that a try in the future.

Do you think a center point should be shown only for circles and arcs, or for every object?

One thing I am a bit worried about is putting in grips that may possibly interfere with working on the object if they get in the way too much. That's why I did not try to do that initially. But I would like to give it a try when I get a chance to work on it.

- Michael

Hi Michael i think center off circle arc elips with option to enable and disable and without grips just a yellow point that way we can test it and see if it is goining to work or not
if it does not work for moving the object, center point visiblity for snaping i think is a must just small grey or black cross is good enough

Hi lyes,

> center point visiblity for snaping i think is a must
> just small grey or black cross is good enough

Actually there should already be a small gray X being shown at center point snaps, same as for all snaps, unless you have possibly turned that off?

This is what it should look like - notice the small X markers that appear on osnap targets that are within a semi-wide area around the mouse:



You can see one above there marking the center point as an available snap, as well as one on each of the 2 nearest quadrants.


By default those are on, but it is possible to turn them off in moi.ini, check your moi.ini file under the [Drawing Aids] section for these values:

ObjectSnapShowMarkers=y
ObjectSnapMarkerOpacity=80

If you have it set to ObjectSnapShowMarkers=n, then change it back to =y to enable them. Also you can increase the opacity value there to make them more substantial, that value can go up to 255 for being fully opaque.

- Michael

I´ve more then once looked for a centerpoint for squares and rectangles too 1
centerpoint is a good idea !

Hi Michael if you have big arc and try to snap to its center point you have to look for it!!
for circle its ok you can zoom out and try put the mouse in the midel off circle to snap to its center

Hi lyes, I guess I'm not sure I understand - you previously wrote:

> just small grey or black cross is good enough

You should already be seeing a small gray cross. It will show up if you get your mouse in the general area of the center point, the default is that markers are displayed for snap points within 100 pixels of your mouse.

You can adjust the radius if you want inside of moi.ini, under the [Drawing Aids] section, look for this entry:
ObjectSnapMarkerDisplayRadius=100


Here is a screenshot of what you should be seeing with an arc:



That's a small gray cross, right? Are you not seeing those markers yourself?

- Michael

The only time I dont see it is when I dont have a command selected. Could he just be wanting the ability to see it with no command selected? Or possibly in a complicated model finding that point could get cluttered? so the ability to define it?

Just trying to follow along.

Maybe with the new styles the ability for that point to take on the styles property?

HI Michaeal yes is like Burman said is ability to see the center pt off circle and arc ( grey cross ) without selecting it .
2: is when you selecte circle and arc the possibylity to move it from its center pt without calling the comand move

my be the problem is in the screen 22" (1920x1080)

Hi Burr, yeah I think that probably lyes would be the one to answer your questions there for sure.


> The only time I dont see it is when I dont have a command selected.

Yeah, it will only show up when there is a pointpicker running, when such things as object snaps are active.


> Could he just be wanting the ability to see it with no command selected?

Well, that was one part that he was talking about earlier, I thought we were on to a slightly different topic but maybe not...

I guess the part that may have confused me is this one:

Normally I use that term "snapping" for things that control the pointpicker, such as grid snap, object snap, and straight snap.


Anyway, those little gray X target markers are in there for this purpose of making it easier to home in on particular snap points that may otherwise be a bit difficult to target.

- Michael

Hi lyes,

> HI Michaeal yes is like Burman said is ability to see the center pt
> off circle and arc ( grey cross ) without selecting it .

You mean always displayed under all circumstances, regardless of whether you are in a command that can actually do something to the center point or not?

I've intentionally tried to only make those center points show up when they can actually be used for something, so that's why they show up only when you are picking a point and you have object snaps enabled.

Otherwise if they were to show up all the time, your screen could get pretty filled up with a bunch of things that don't really have any purpose for what you are currently doing...


> 2: is when you selecte circle and arc the possibylity to
> move it from its center pt without calling the comand move

Yeah, I understand this one - this is different than snapping, this would be a new "grip" same as the scaling and rotation grips on the edit frame currently.

I do want to experiment with adding this in the future. I'm not quite sure exactly when, I am a little worried about making grips that can possibly overlay to the interior of the object.

The current grips stay all around the outside of the currently selected object which is a pretty nice thing, it keeps them away from taking up clickable space from the inside of the object.

A center grip would not be like that anymore, it would be over top of the object instead of only around it, so it would possibly cause some interference problems that the current grips do not cause. Maybe that will not cause much of a problem, but maybe it will.

That means that it may take some experimentation to see how that works.

Sometimes experimentation can take extra time, so I'm not quite sure right now exactly when I will be able to get to this one, it is possible not until v3 since I am trying to wrap up v2 right now so it is not a great time for new experiments right at this time, the new object organization tools are pretty much taking all the effort in that area right now.

- Michael

Hi lyes

> my be the problem is in the screen 22" (1920x1080)

It's possible those markers are too small for your screen.

There are some things you can do to adjust them though.

In moi.ini under the [Drawing Aids] section, there are some settings you can alter:

ObjectSnapMarkerOpacity=80
ObjectSnapMarkerDisplayRadius=100

The opacity is a value from 0 (totally transparent) to 255 (totally opaque) - if you increase this to have a higher opacity value the maker will become more substantial and darker on the screen which may be good for you.

Also the display radius is the radius in pixels around the mouse - markers that are within this radius of the mouse cursor will be displayed. You may want to increase that value if the current radius is too small on your screen.

Finally, the little X marker itself is an image named "OsnapMarker.png" which is in the \ui subfolder inside of MoI's main installation folder. It is a pretty small 7x7 image, if you replace this image with a larger sized one that should make those markers bigger too.

- Michael

Hi Micheal thanks for your time

Hi lyes, currently a simple solution for that is to hide the other objects that are interfering with your point picking.

If you only have that arc visible, it should then be easy to tell which center point will belong to it since there will be only one.

But there are probably a couple of different things I can do in the future to improve this situation - having the center point show up as a grip when it is selected as we were previously discussing is one thing that would probably help since it would give you a way to identify it, and maybe showing some kind of highlight on the curve that has a center osnap active on it would also help.

But again, I'm not sure exactly when I will be able to do those, for now just hide the other things and that should let you complete that task pretty easily in the current version.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I can relate to lyes with center picking issues, especially when you have several arc enteties around each other not sharing the same center point it's a hit and miss situation.
It'll be nice to have something to zero in on the right acr center, maybe a mouse click key combination to pick the arc it self to snap to the center.
In regards to the object organisation stuff if you apply a style colour to an object/arc will the X marker inherit the same colour, this could help in identifing which center belongs to which arc.


Cheers

Hi Danny, yup I think it would definitely be a good area to tune up. I'm just not quite sure when I will be able to make that happen.

It may be a couple of months before I'll be able to focus on brand new features, right now I'm pretty much just trying to wrap up v2 and adding new features tends to be pretty much the opposite of "wrapping things up".

re: Using style for the marker - that is an interesting idea, but the marker is pretty small and faint, I'm not sure that it will be that distinct to use color for it, plus that would be of no help in the situation where you have not assigned any styles. Possibly some highlight around the arc that has its center targeted would have a more universal application.

For now there is a sure-fire way to solve the problem though, which is to hide other entities so that they are not cluttering things up.

- Michael

Michael, I didn't expect you to have a look at this right away, we know you have your priorities and it's good that you set yourself deadlines by setting a time limit on each beta.
Could you imagine the forum posts if the beta deadline was up and you didn't have the next one out yet :D

No probs, keep up the good work, it's well appreciated.

Cheers

There is another "One Man" app genius who has had 75 Beta updates (in 4 versions incl mac) since last September.

And, still, just as frustrating as waiting for Michaels beta update!

The customer is never satisfied!

Brian
(Will the Easter egg be under the cabbage in my garden on Monday?)