Michael,

First off let me say that I have tried the construction lines. Along with the Straight Snap and Object Snap tools, it is nothing short of greatness. I am amazed at how well that works, much better than guides in other apps. I under stand I should expect differences in the work flow between NURBS and polygon modeling, but this is my first venture into a pure NURBS modeler. I am doing some remodeling and wanted to model a sofa with some complex curves. Only took me about 15 minuits to do my first model in MoI. I guess that tells you something about the ease of use you have built into MoI. Anyway, after reviewing the tutorials for a secomd time, I notice that in fact you can edit the solids from sweeps, revolves, etc from te control curve control points. At least for a while. After some other activities, the econtrol points only affect the curve, not the resultant feature solid. Can you tell me what specific actions lock the solid and dissasociate the modeling curve from resulting solid (I'm not even sure I am using the correct terminology here)? The command refernce does not really get into teh relationship among the various commands or the general operation or flow of MoI.

Anyway, Just let me compliment you on an your work here. I may have some additional comments and suggestions (especially regarding the UI) but I will reserve them until I have a lot more seat time. Except for one: why is the file menu om the bottom rather than the windows standard? I'm sure you have a reason.

Thanks again for your help in getting me started.

Regards,

John Tucker

Hi John, I'm glad that you are making good progress with MoI and enjoying it!

> After some other activities, the econtrol points only
> affect the curve, not the resultant feature solid. Can you
> tell me what specific actions lock the solid and dissasociate
> the modeling curve from resulting solid

The "history chain" will get broken with any operation that involves removing the object and replacing it with a new version. Most of the time this will mean operations that cut the object like booleans or trimming.

In the future I do want to improve this and make a deeper history.

For now you will mostly want to do adjustments soon after you have created a surface, before you start to apply booleans and such to it.


> Except for one: why is the file menu om the bottom
> rather than the windows standard? I'm sure you have
> a reason.

Well, one reason initially was to make the UI more friendly to tablet users. The "rest position" for a tablet will tend to be more at the bottom of the tablet (corresponding to the bottom of the screen) rather than at the top of the tablet. So having the UI along the bottom gives easier access in that case.

But also aside from that, it's a nice feeling having the top clear of UI, it allows for a more open feeling of the whole app, kind of primarily showcasing your 3D model content rather than having a window title and menu bar as the first thing you see at the top.

- Michael