Hurrah! Bravo! Splendid!

Thanks!

Unfortunatly there is no sub-D modellerer with such a devoted developer. So I guess I do all my work in Moi from now on. Maybe you should consider offering some lectures about customer support to autodesk.

But seriously, I would never consider character modelling in Moi, when it comes to product design subD's doesn't really seem to be an option. Even with a modeller like Modo you are far from nurbs precision.

Anyway I made a test scene and got it to work. My geometry wasn't as clean as yours. This was caused by the square profile at the bottom of my tube. But with an extra vertical trim I was able to make it work. And I really liked that perp/perp snap.

Finally I have a question about booleans. Sometimes I have to use the union command twice to really union two object. First attempt only cuts them. What is causing this? When I united the tube and the cube this happened. I attach my test file.

Thank you and God Jul! (Merry christmas in swedish)

/Oskar

Hi Oskar, Merry Christmas!

Re: Sub-d - T-splines (http://www.tsplines.com/) could be worth checking out as a tool for squishy/melty/blobby type stuff, it basically gives you a sub-d type workflow but can generate NURBS surface data out the other end.


> Even with a modeller like Modo you are far from nurbs precision.

Yes, that's true, for example some pretty simple things like a 100% exact sphere doesn't really work in sub-d, the basic sphere shapes are just pretty close to being like a sphere but are actually slightly ovoid-ish. And in sub-d it is horribly difficult to cut a hole in something where the hole has an exact shape like a circle of a specific radius value.


But on the other hand, with an example like your specific model here, you are pretty well leaving the world of precision in a lot of ways already... For example your model was not defined by a set of plans with specific dimensions on them, you didn't have things like fillets that had to be one specific radius in one part of the model, stuff like that.


Not every kind of product design has a focus on precision and conforming to particular specs or stuff like that - if the focus of the design itself is more on overall blobby smoothness as a high priority then a lack of precision does not particularly harm you for that particular design...


I'll take a look at your boolean problem.


- Michael

Hi Oskar, so your boolean thing is because one of your pieces there was an open surface and not a solid.

The booleans are more oriented towards using solids, the different kinds of booleans (like difference vs union) are about different ways of combining the "insides" or "outsides" of the shapes and if you do not have a solid volume there is not a well defined inside or outside volume to it.

So it can be good to solidify objects before doing booleans on them, so that they work in the most expected way.

To do that for your case, select the tall body piece and then run Construct > Planar - that will cap off the open square bottom by putting a plane in there, and then it will be a solid. After you have done that, then you should see that doing a boolean union gives you the proper result right away.

In MoI v2 there is an object type readout in the upper-right corner of the screen that will tell you if the selected object is a solid or not:



If it does not say Solid there (either Joined Srf for more than 1 surface joined together but not closed, or just "Surface" for an individual surface that is not closed) then it means that there is still a gap or hole in the object somewhere.


The booleans will still try to cut things up when not working on solids, but usually you will want to use Trim on non-solids instead. Trim does not try to discard things based on volume but rather it lets you pick the pieces you want to get rid of.

- Michael

T-splines could be worth checking out in the future.

You are right about this model. But it is alot easier to create plans and drawings from a design created in moi compared to some smoothed poly mesh from maya. In moi I know the radius of my fillets. :)

By the way, i noticed that it is really convenient to import illustrator files. Is there any way to export curves back to .ai or .dwg?

/Oskar

Hi Oskar, yes generating 2D illustrations from 3D does tend to work better with NURBS models.

NURBS models in general are made out of broader surfaces which then in turn helps to get longer smooth curves to go in the drawing rather than a bazillion little jaggy lines.

MoI does not have a whole lot of stuff in this area yet, but there is some support currently.


> Is there any way to export curves back to .ai or .dwg?

Yup, AI is supported for writing curves. If you just do a SaveAs it's in the file types list there (scroll it down) and it will write out curves and edges to a 2D AI file.

If you have solid objects and you want to get a drawing from them, you'll probably want to use the Construct > Curve > Silhouette command to generate its silhouette curves first before exporting.

For some examples see:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3000.30
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3000.32
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3000.33

- Michael