Thanks for sharing!

This will definitely be useful.

Marc

Hi tyglik
you are great.....
We can hope of having also, in future, Rebuild Surface ?
tnx a lot
best
al

Hi Petr

Thanks for this. much needed.

Michael:

Can this tool show how many points there are in the original curve? Helps to work out how many to reduce to. Would be great if the number input was also a slider or =/- button so you can see dynamically how the curve changes with the number of points. This would help get an accurate fit.

Jamie

I was thinking the same as Jamie above - I'd like to see this function built-in with a slider or button to reduce the number of points in increments.

I still use Corel Draw a lot and they have a function called "Reduce Nodes" that I use frequently to smooth curves.

For example, I'll frequently trace over a complex curve on a backplate by using the Bezier tool and clicking off several points, then Reduce Nodes to get a smooth result. For me it's faster than trying to free-hand draw a smooth curve from the start.

Ed

When you start the command, just type the number and enter, type enter, so 5 enter, 8 enter, 12 enter.

Th see the original points you were mentioning, just show points on the curve before you start the command.

Hi Jamie,

> Can this tool show how many points there are in the original curve?

There isn't currently an easy way for this tool to access that information.

In the future that should be possible though.

- Michael

I've been doing this manually or copying curves into Rhino to rebuild, but I would rather work in MoI as much as possible, so thanks!

Jesse

Just discovered this, pretty essential plugin if you ask me! Thanks Tyglik!
I was copying curves to Rhino and back as well, far from ideal workflow.

The problem is that I have to offset a lot of curves for the project I'm working on. The new curves always have a lot more control points than the original. The next one even more than that.. So big timesaver for me here.

Two questions:
1. Will rebuild curves (planes?) be part of the 2.0 release? I think it's pretty essential, don't know how important it is for all the other users.
2. Would it be possible to have offset rebuilding curves as standard behaviour? So if you offset a curve with 5 control points, you get one with 5 control points as well - at the corresponding locations? Maybe with a "auto, exact, ..." option?

(BTW, haven't been behind my computer for a few weeks, so first days with the new beta and i love it!)

Hi Pitrak,

> 1. Will rebuild curves (planes?) be part of the 2.0 release?

No, but I do want to add it in at some point, probably in v3 when I have a better spot to put a list of additional functions in the UI.


> 2. Would it be possible to have offset rebuilding curves as
> standard behaviour? So if you offset a curve with 5 control
> points, you get one with 5 control points as well - at the
> corresponding locations? Maybe with a "auto, exact, ..." option?

It's generally not possible to produce an actual offset curve by only using the same number of points except in special cases.

Offsetting changes the shape and proportions of a curve, it is not really like other transforms such as moving or rotating. Because of that the offset curve is generated by a kind of fitting process and not just by transforming control points.

I do want to try some things to reduce the complexity of offset curves in the future though.

- Michael

Ok, thanks!
1. The plugin works perfect as it is, so it doesn't really matter for me.
2. That's what I assumed was the problem. In my case however the difference is very small. I'm modelling a highway interchange, using offset for the width of the roads. So there's no need for all those extra control points. That's why an extra option might be useful: in a lot of cases, a curve with the same amount of control points would be precise enough and more convenient overall. In other cases the difference would be problematic of course.

One thing I just noticed: when rebuilding a curve it changes to the current style. The script is probably from before 'styles'. Anyone knows how to change the script so it keeps its style?

Another minor bug with Rebuild Curves and the august beta: if you undo after a rebuild curve, the original curve is locked..

This is a MoI's feature ;) The Hide or Lock commands aren't regular ones - you can use them while running another command (e.g. boolean diff). And when you launch some command (e.g. to draw curve) after using hide or lock there is no way to undo the state of view considering visibility. -Petr

Hi Petr,
In the scene browser under styles, there is now a lock icon instead of an eye. Clicking this hides the object for me. Does this not work for you? Or were you refering to something else?

Burr

Hi pitrak,

> One thing I just noticed: when rebuilding a curve it changes
> to the current style. The script is probably from before
> 'styles'. Anyone knows how to change the script so it
> keeps its style?

It's not so easy to make the script handle this at the moment, but I have added some additional script methods for the next v2 release which will make it possible to adjust this in the next beta.

- Michael

Hi Petr, re: Lock - actually what happens in this case is the rebuild command locks the input objects, and if that object is then deleted with a call to moi.geometryDatabase.removeObjects() it will get recorded on the undo stack with that locked property set.

So this can be fixed by just unlocking the objects before they are deleted in RebuildCurve.js .


For the next v2 release I've also added some methods on factories so that it is easier to retrieve the objects that were generated and inserted into the geometry database with a regular factory update() call.

- Michael

>> So this can be fixed by just unlocking the objects before they are deleted in RebuildCurve.js

I fixed that a few weeks ago and put the updated version there... -Petr