I fully support the suggestion above.

MoI as a platform might have had an overwhelming advantage over conventional CAD packages. In fact it is so innovative that as soon as we get enough tooling to produce a drawing - I will use MoI as my base app.

Also a single snapshot type 2D generation sounds great and might help a lot (before auto-updating released) - we will be able to export such a shot to other drafting software and dimension it and print it out.

I hope Michael will add some of these tools in v 3-4...

this review is show our notions :) from autocad

http://www.lukewarmcoffee.com/cad/AUGI%20-%20Creating%202D%20Drawings%20from%203D%20AutoCAD%20Models.pdf

similar than the previous one.

Michael would be the modification of 3dm2dxf application due to "snapshot and acual saved camera view" big request?
either no need hiddenline method just wire , only to 2d flat dxf

andras - thank you for the link - valuable stuff

Hi andras,

> Michael would be the modification of 3dm2dxf application due
> to "snapshot and acual saved camera view" big request?
> either no need hiddenline method just wire , only to 2d flat dxf

Sorry, I'm not quite sure if I understand the question.

But the 3dm2dxf conversion utility is only very simple in operation - it just takes curves it finds in the 3DM file and outputs them as SPLINE entities in the DXF file, it is not set up to process the curves in other ways.

I do want to add a direct DXF output from MoI in the future, I think it will be focused on doing 2D output like you are mentioning, that would be able to include some options for how to project curves similar to the current AI output. I'm not sure when that will happen, but maybe for v3.

Maybe one good method for you currently would be to first save from MoI as an .AI file (which will produce a flattened 2D drawing), then open that back up into MoI and save that result as a 3DM file, then run 3dm2dxf on that to make your DXF.

That would produce a DXF file with curves that were all projected and flattened down to a single plane.

- Michael

Hi andras, also just one other note - one reason why I have not done a direct DXF export yet is that it is a fairly complex format with a lot of different ways to store data in it.

Some applications only work on certain kinds of entities, so there needs to be a variety of options for how to control the output, like should curves be written as SPLINE entities, or broken into line segments and written as a POLYLINE entity, probably with some way to control the density of the generated lines, then whether it should be projected to be 2D or not, ...

In general things with a lot of options tend to be more difficult for me to create, so they take additional time.

Also even another complication with DXF is that it is possible to store polygon mesh data in them, which is then a much different kind of thing rather than focusing on curve/wire output.

As time has gone on, it seems to have gotten more clear that people are asking for DXF/DWG output for 2D data though and not mesh data, so if I don't worry about trying to make meshes that will probably help.

- Michael

Oh sorry :D I mixed the member of sentens sorry ... sometimes rather I would have to learn english than dealing with 3D :D sorry again.

AND that is very cool idea ! and thanks thanks...

anyway the currently process is that I make a flat DXF (with AI) and export that to Turbocad Designer or DoubleCad XT . And there I can make documentation. So If the features come to Moi (hatch and dimension and print ) we wont need the DXF export feature (directly).

Looks like one of Michael focus for MoI V3 is 2D drawing creation :)
We will see what will happen for V3.

For me, it will very interesting if Michael can make a list of focus for V3.
So we can see the future of MoI and I think users then can make feedback for the next release.

Thanks ;)

Hi Anis,

> Looks like one of Michael focus for MoI V3 is 2D drawing creation :)

Yes, I'd like to at least make some progress in that area.


> For me, it will very interesting if Michael can make a list of focus for V3.

The closest thing to that is the wishlist which is available here:
http://moi3d.com/wiki/Wishlist

You can just post here in the forum to make any feedback that you want...

It's difficult for me to post a list of stuff since I don't really have an exact roadmap for v3, just some general ideas on things that I want to try.

I'm pretty sure that any list that I would try to make now would be pretty inaccurate by the time that v3 is finished.

- Michael

Hey everybody: don't forget even very dated copies of Rhino will handle 2d format generation. (dxf, dwg, etc.) and file handling stuff not available (yet) in MOI.

MOI excels as a 3d/2d drawing environment, I no longer even try to model in rhino- but it's a good tool to have around to handle .3dm files for various output and conversion duties.

note about 2d- I think that for technical drawing and illustration using MOI 2d is amazing, MOI is a perfect blend of CAD and Illustrator. It's snap friendly and support geometric entry like CAD, but understands booleans and paths like illustrator. A closed, joined path in MOI imports perfect into Illustrator, is there any drawing task this interface doesn't handle better?