> By the way, How do you know my name ?! :P

You signed it at the bottom on your first post in this thread... :)

- Michael

Hi Anthony, so your new piece has a different problem in it where it folds over itself in this area:



That could be due to a problem in sweep that has been solved in MoI v2 where sweep was sensitive to the control point spacing of the rails and could cause the sweep to kind of "bunch up" if control points had different kinds of spacing between them on the different rails.

There have been a lot of things improved in MoI since v1 actually - the current trial version is actually about 1 and a half years old now, v2 is almost ready to be released with a lot of improvements in it.

One other note - you have a lot of curves in your model on the same spots as edges, that can make it difficult to select edges so you probably want to hide those curves after you are done using them to get them out of the way. If you select a curve and then try to run fillet, it won't work, you need to select the actual solid's edges and not the original generator curves if that makes any sense.

There is also an alternate filleting mechanism that can sometimes help for filleting difficult cases - that's the surface/surface fillet which is activated if you run Fillet when 2 individual separated surfaces are selected. Sometimes doing fillets at that individual surface to surface level can be a way to fillet a model that is not behaving well with the edge-based filleter.

- Michael

all right, sounds great though !
Well is a MOI v.2 going to be released in a demo version aswell ? To try it out before buying it ?

Yup, there will be a demo version of v2 available just after the release is finalized.

It's getting pretty close... There is one more v2 beta release that I'm working on, then after that I will be updating the documentation and then it will be ready.

- Michael

There's a collection of all the v2 beta release notes available here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/doc/V2releasenotes.html

That's basically a list of all the new stuff that is coming for v2.

- Michael

cool !
well hope it'll be ready before christmass cause I'll finish up my internship around the end of December ^^
(doesn't mean I won't use MOI after that deadline :P I do think there are some pretty great opportunity on the market mastering NURBS modelling through MOI, as I'd like to become a Designer. Yeah, designer often got good eyes for colors and stuff or concept, but they rarely know how to modell or represent correctly their though. That's the part I'll enter the game hehe... I think I have to keep it up and don't give it up despite those little... technical issues :D )

Thanks again for thos explanations ;)

wow, I've checked the link you provided me... awsome improvement !! I haven't read all down yet but there are some pretty cool new things like the Scene Browser helping organising the scene. Good point here ;)

Anyway, I'll try the technic you spoke earlier and I'll tell you if it works.

I think you may actually have a case here where the fillet mechanism does not know how to handle this corner juncture with multiple fillets running into there.



It can do any one of those, like this:








But I don't think it knows how to handle all of them being filleted at once.

In fact, it's not very clear to me how that would actually work, I've combined those pieces together and it's something like this:






I guess it would ideally put a kind of rounded rail on the top or something like that... I'm pretty sure it does not understand this kind of corner condition, so this piece is probably just not going to get automatically filleted by MoI's fillet mechanism.

You probably will need a more "heavyweight" CAD program to do that one, something like SolidWorks or Pro/E maybe...

I think it looks like you would have to do some manual trimming and managing of the individual fillet pieces to make that happen in MoI, that's how I assembled the piece in the screenshot above. But then you've also got to figure out exactly how that corner should actually behave.

- Michael

yeah i see what you mean, well I tried your technic and it's okey I've got the volume but can't really fillet edges the way I would like. It's a pitty, there's apparently no other turn around. That's kind of sad :(

However, why wouldn't it work to apply a fillet function on the edges I've selected ? (as seen on the screenshoot) Ho yes, I first filleted the problematic edge so that it's more "smooth". By now it doesn't seem to work but is there something I'm doing wrong ?

And yeah, I'm afraid to switch to those kind of heavy CAD package... those software are more likely for engineers and well, I'm more "design oriented" artist though... I don't know if I could learn as easily and as fast as I learnt MOI. Moreover, prizing isn't obviously the same huhu :)

But good friend of mine who's studying architecture in University in Switzerland spoke to me about Rhino or something. He told me it was great for modellisation. In your opinion, is it more likely to work with this software for that kind of fillet task ?

So I guess the corner juncture area is supposed to look like this:



MoI's fillet mechanism does not know how to do that though.

The one here I did by importing the MoI model into ViaCAD which is a different CAD program that has a more robust filleting mechanism than MoI. It can come in handy to use alongside MoI for fillet cases where the geometry engine that MoI uses is unable to figure it out.

- Michael

> In your opinion, is it more likely to work with this software
> for that kind of fillet task ?

No, not really - filleting is not a particularly strong area of Rhino either.

I tried Rhino on this case and it's slightly better in that it doesn't make as much of a mess as MoI (in MoI v2 the filleter will return partial results if it was not able to calculate the full result, unlike MoI v1 where it will just do nothing) but just leaves an open hole in that juncture area.

ViaCAD is much better to use for more difficult filleting than either MoI or Rhino, it's actually very inexpensive ($99).

- Michael

ho okey so there is some fillet improvment to do then hehe ;)

it's weird because I managed to get this kind of "triple" edges fillet in the bottom of the piece, but can't manage to get it done in the same way for the top. But that's indeed like you say maybe a limitation of Fillet mechanism in MOI (by the way, filleting looks nice and easy but i can imagine how complex it really is underneath to develop algorithmes that works with such kind of surface)

It might be something really cool to improve for users in v.3 :D

the screenshoot of the bottom part:

> However, why wouldn't it work to apply a fillet function
> on the edges I've selected ? (as seen on the screenshoot)

In your last screenshot you mean?

For the model that looks like this? :



That one has a problem with the curved surface, in this area:



If you go in there and move some control points around you can see that the surface actually folds back over top of itself:





If you use that boolean technique that I wrote about, it will make a better model, and then every other edge in there should fillet, except not all 3 of them going into that one particular corner.

- Michael

> it's weird because I managed to get this kind of "triple" edges
> fillet in the bottom of the piece, but can't manage to get it done
> in the same way for the top.

Yeah that one is a different case which is handled - the main difference there is that the corner does not have to try and cross multiple other surfaces, the one that causes the problem has to kind of bend around and travel across more than one surface in the bending part...


> It might be something really cool to improve for users in v.3 :D

Unfortunately it may take longer than that for some things like new corner cases... Those are pretty hard.

I do hope to get at least some improvements to filleting for v3 though, but it depends on how much time is invested in it by the company that makes the geometry library that I use - the fillets in MoI come from a geometry library that I license, I did not code that part directly myself.

- Michael

ho okey, anyway thanks for your feedback ! It was a pleasure talking with you ;)
I'll let you know if things get better and well, let me know if in other versions of MoI you happen to solve that kind of problem !
I would be pleased to use MoI in my workflow if I get hired in some kind of Design company that would need to have a modler/render/designer guy ^^

Thanks again for all your responses ;)

Anthony

Hi Anthony and welcome to MoI :)

I always like a challenge and I always push MoI to find the best solution, hope you don't mind.
I've probably mentioned this before, but I always tend to start off modeling with simple geometric shapes, where possible of course, like arcs, circles and primitive solids, not only in MoI but in all 3d solid modelers, I feel the software has an easier time calculating stuff out and achieving what you want, like Michael has mentioned already, bigger is better, starting off with a nicer larger surface and trimming to shape is the way to go with NURBS.

Anyway, I usually take the solid modeling approach and use surfaces, curves and other solids to carve things out a bigger solid, like Michaels example here
I've attached a version of your model taking this approach and left all the entities that I used to create it, they are hidden, unfortunately it's in colour, V1 demo won't see the colour it's just easier to see what was used for what.
Is this what you were looking for? any questions, feel free.

Cheers

@Danny seems you have a very little blue glitch ;)

Hi danny !

Thanks for your enthusiasm ! It's a pleasure to get some external feedback and you apprently rock at modelling !
And all your mod matches quiet perfectly the "blue print" I joined, that's insane :D

However, as you told me to feel free to ask for anything : It would be great for me and for other users to see precisely the workflow you've used to build the "boiteaproblem" :D
I mean if you've got a bit of free time (I know it can be time consuming huhu) if you could take some screenshoot along the way it would be REALLY nice :D

PS: I guess you've used v.2 beta ? Because I've got the v.1 (...) ^^
EDIT: Pilou's right, what about the glitch ? Is that okey for rendering with Mental Ray back into 3dsmax for instance ?

This glitch for rendering is nothing ;) (not visible)
It was just for the perfection :D

Thank you Michael for providing explainations and examples for problems like these, I learn so much about modeling with MoI from these kinds of posts - especially since these are very common problems for a lot of the modeling I do.

If possible, please consider collecting up these tidbits - especially the GIFs and create perhaps a Troubleshooting / Best Practices wiki area or perhaps a section in the User's manual or a seperate manual on tips, troubleshooting and best practices. ;-)

NURBS modeling is IMO, way easier than SDS, BUT if you don't know how to troubleshoot your objects (especially the way you do), it still makes it hard to become successful creating the shapes you desire.

Posts like these go beyond teaching you how to use a particular function within MoI, they teach you solutions and techniques which a lot of times you just don't learn from reading the docs on the individual tools themselves...


-Will