1. Here is my attempt at explaining it further...Let me know if its not clear...
(see image below)

2. That would be great!!!

3. Curves from isoparms would be even better!!! :) sometimes when looking at wireframes, i kind see the value of
attaching things and/or snapping to isoparms, even reconstructing parts of the surface using some of them or creating
new surfaces through re-wiring....no particular example right now though, but i might come back to you later with it. :)

BTW, Thanks for responding so quickly. I really enjoy working with MoI. Kudos to you for putting it all together.

Best,

Luis



I've also attached the file for anyone to see and experiment.

Hi Luis, just a quick comment on one part:


Yeah using it for reconstruction or constructing other kinds of objects like some tubes or something could be useful.

But I'm not sure if snapping on to isoparms would really give you very much - in MoI version 2 you can just snap to any point you want on a surface, with the new "on srf" object snap.

Here's an example:




Snapping on to only a few isoparms would kind of be a more restricted number of spots on the surface than you can do with just the "on srf" one...

- Michael

Hi luis, thanks for posting the example file, that helps a lot to clarify!

From what I understand of what you are looking for, you could possibly use Scale 1D instead of control point editing to get the right result.

So for example select the orange curve, and then run the Transform > Scale > Scale 1D command.

For the origin of the scale pick this point here (where the mouse cursor is at):




For the direction and first reference point for the scale, pick the intersection point that is on the orange curve, here:




Now for the final stage of Scale1D you have the option to either enter a scale factor like 2.0 to double the size, or you can pick another reference point which will calculate the scale factor for you to exactly scale from the first reference point to the second one.

So for your case here you would pick the ending point you want here:



And then that stretches that curve by exactly the amount needed to relocate from the first intersection to the second intersection:




So if you want to do a kind of a stretching from one particular point exactly to match another one, Scale1D can be useful for that instead of doing any point manipulation stuff.

- Michael

Hi Luis, here is an example that's a bit less busy that shows Scale1D in use for this kind of thing:



There you can see how the curve responds during the Scale1D steps - once you have picked the first reference distance to be locked on to the particular spot, then the last reference point will let you track that point to the new spot.

Was that the kind of thing that you want to do?

One other note - the curves in your file were just slightly non-symmetrical, like the orange curve was slightly not in a vertical plane. So I tightened them up just a bit which gives cleaner kinds of snaps. If you see things like a perpendicular snap is slightly not in the same spot as an intersection where you would expect for them to be the same, it probably means your curve is slightly not symmetrical or planar.

- Michael

Michael,

You're right. i just think the even spacing of isoparms make them useful for additional geometry to be put in place. Being able to extract isoparms as curves would be a great addition though...

On the same note, I have another question since i'm really just learning about surfacing, if you can extract the isoparms as brand new curves and then network them, would you end up with the same surface or would there be a slight difference? I guess i'm asking because sometimes i prefer to see the wire frame and sometimes that affects my modeling approach. I simply don't know enough to understand the subtleties. :)

Any videos or links would be very helpful

Thanks again for the quick response.

--Luis

Hi Michael,

Your solution works great for this example. However, I guess what I was going for is to be able to pick the intersection point of the curve and move it to other snap points on the scene.

With "edit/show points" on, I can do this by clicking anywhere on the curve and picking a point arbitrarily then dragging this "temporary" point and snapping to other things as I would normally do. I would like to do the same, but by being able to pick the intersection as the starting point. Its just I can never quite lock in the "true" intersection even while zoomed in because no pick point or crosshair at that intersection shows up on the screen that I could grab on. This would guarantee the curve is snapped to and passes through the next snap point I choose to place it in. Other tools can do it (e.g. pick the intersection), so I figured why not this one. :)

I dont mind if the nearby control points get slightly modified, what i've noticed is that while dragging the curve with "edit/show points" on, only the nearest 3 control points get affected while the others stay locked in position (at least from what I can tell). What I care about is being able to make slight modifications to the curve around those control points and not have to reconstruct the entire thing all over again, which in come cases I can never get it quite right without doing a lot of other work.

Let me know if this makes sense...

Re: your comment:
quote:

Yeah, this was probably a left over change for when I was trying the "on curve" snap while dragging a point on the orange curve with "edit/show points" on in the top ortho view.

Best,

--Luis