Tried one harder - Thought I'd make a vent port like one that would exist on a sport car...

Made a curved mesh surface, then the shape of the port out of one single freeform spline.
It was projected to the surface, trimmed and deleted, leaving the new hole's with it's own native edges.
I copied the projected shape, moved it lower, scaled down, rotated and extruded it.

Then I wanted to blend between the two shapes... Nothing. The shapes had a lot of individual unconnected segments in it,
and Blend only wants to use whole, single curves that reside on surfaces.
I tried to Join these separate pieces into one curve, but since Joining makes it's own separate element, it defeated the purpose and I couldn't use Blend.
I'm not sure where I could've done something different to make two contiguous rings on their surfaces to Blend into a seamless transition.

What I constructed below was done in sections, but there are irregularities in the curvature and even chunks missing.
I take it, that since projecting a curve to a surface does not make a contiguous curve like unto the original shape, then I might not be able to use Blend on these elements.
I can use Network or Sweep to achieve like results, but the Blend tool offers that useful silky-smooth"Tangent" blending ability that is hard to get other ways.

Hi Mike yeah the Blend command is currently limited to only being able to make a blend between 2 edges at a time, so you'll run into a problem if you've got something like one edge trying to map to a fragmented set of multiple edges on the other side.

There are a couple of things you can do about that. If the side that has multiple edges has each small edge touching smoothly to its neighbor, they can be merged together with the Merge command:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference10.htm#merge

Then once you have merged together the fragmented edges into one long edge you can then use the long edge for making the blend.

The other option is that you can take the long edge and dice it up into smaller edges by using the Trim command - inside the Trim command use the "Add trim points" button which will let you click some points on the edge for the spots to cut it at. For this method you want to dice the long edge up into segments matching the segmentation of the other side.

In v3 I do want to work on improving the Blend command so that it will be able to use a sequence of edges on each side of the blend instead of only one edge on each side.

- Michael

The other thing you can do is to use the rebuild command on curves before you do the surface trims or extrudes, so the new holes have that continuous edge needed for the blend.

Thanks Michael, Burr,

Wouldn't you know, the second time I tried it, I got a perfectly joined curve and the blend worked without a hitch.
But I'll play with those two methods.

Hi Mike, so like Burr mentioned that may mean that the first time you did it you used a curve made up of several segment pieces as part of the construction. Curves made up of several sub segments will generally transmit those segments to things constructed or cut from them.

When you use the Join command, it's really sort of like a kind of grouping where you can still revert to the previous segments by using Separate. The rebuild command can help to merge 2 smooth segments together into a single larger segment if that's what you need.

- Michael

That was very helpful, Michael.

I found two things: 1) The Merge function will cause one curve to be created from many broken adjacent segments - only if they are NOT separated or intersected by the junction of another curve.
2) The Rebuild function does a nice job, but the result does not naturally match the associated edge it resides along side with. I could inset the rebuild curve and Loft the original to the rebuild, but you'd see the un-smooth result.

In the pic below, I went nuts with Blend. Made holes from projections and even learned that projections can be moved and tweaked by moving their parent object!!! Wow!
I ran into a problem where my to-blend edge had intersected curves... hmmm. I had to Trim in new points to blend the edges in bite-sized sections. But they sometimes don't run tangent to each other.
It's better than nothing, and I'm pretty excited about learning how to do more complex modeling. :-)

Hi Mike,

> 1) The Merge function will cause one curve to be created from
> many broken adjacent segments - only if they are NOT
> separated or intersected by the junction of another curve.

Yup, that's correct - it is only possible to merge 2 edges when there are no other edges connected at the spot that they touch. If there are other edges also radiating out from the same connection spot you can't merge them together because the other edges are expecting to be part of a loop along with the ones being merged, and that would not be possible anymore if they did not end in the same spot.


> 2) The Rebuild function does a nice job, but the result does not
> naturally match the associated edge it resides along side with.
> I could inset the rebuild curve and Loft the original to the rebuild,
> but you'd see the un-smooth result.

I'm not sure if I completely understand this part, but the Rebuild command generates a curve as its output. In many cases you can also select an edge as the input to any command that takes curves, but if the command outputs standalone curves you will get a new curve object generated as the result, the edge is not modified in a case like that.

Some commands do work differently if you select edges instead of curves, it depends on the particular command.

- Michael

Yep - Blend is your friend :) IMHO one of the most powerful and under-utilized functions in MoI.

It also works well for lines and arcs.

In my work I create a lot of curved 2D shapes to use as profiles in Sweep operations. I no longer try to draw radiused corners - I just create my main curves, leaving gaps between them, and use Blend to build the radius corners. It's fast and works great.

Ed

Man, if that was a snake it would've bit me...

I've had it happen anytime I grabbed curves what were not edges,
but I've been using freeform splines and guides snapped to tangents.
Yes, versatile.

Circular Selection as mentioned here

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3628.1

Style editing without having to go through a three tier process, I would like to just ctrl+click the color chip or something to pull up the swatch box and select a different color

Hi Grendel,

> Style editing without having to go through a three tier
> process, I would like to just ctrl+click the color chip or
> something to pull up the swatch box and select a different color

That actually works exactly like you're describing already in V2 - hold down Ctrl and click on the color swatch area of a style in the scene browser and the color picker will pop up and let you edit the color.

Also another related shortcut is if you right-click on the style line in the properties panel (the panel that shows some info on the currently selected objects), that will pop up an edit style dialog for editing that style's name and/or color without going to the full style editor dialog.

- Michael

ahhh, thanks Michael

This may have come up earlier in this thread, haven't read them all...

But as a long time Solidworks user, the idea of not being able to change my mind, many steps into a process later, i.e. complete unbreakable history, still makes me twitch. ;) (What if I get something wrong, what if a requirement changes, what if, what if, what if...)

Doubtless its a tall order, but this is a "wish" list so I'm wishing.

(It's cool that at least to some level you can make real time changes profiles/curves without having to start over.)

-GregW

Hi Greg,

> (What if I get something wrong, what if a requirement
> changes, what if, what if, what if...)

Well, you just delete pieces that you don't want and draw some replacement pieces...

When drawing and creating things happens very quickly it's not such a big deal to redraw particular pieces.

However having said that, I do want to add a deeper history function in the future. It's a pretty involved area so it's hard to know exactly when that will happen though.

In the meantime if having the ability to do history updates is a vitally important thing for your particular workflow, then you should probably be using some other program that puts a lot of emphasis on that type of process as its main function. Of course a kind of more cumbersome drawing and modeling process that tends to make you go through more steps is usually a part of packages that put a lot of emphasis on that kind of stuff - for MoI it is much more of a priority to have drawing and modeling feel really quick and light and not have a lot of steps and processes to go through.

But if you don't want to do quick modeling and drawing and you instead want to do more heavily planned and constrained layouts that can be tweaked with history, there are quite a lot of CAD programs out there that are focused on doing that already, like SolidWorks, SolidEdge, Alibre, Pro/E, etc.. etc... etc... MoI is actually focused on a different feel than that partly because there are already so many choices you can use for doing that style of modeling. Instead of trying to make MoI a kind of clone of programs that already handle that style of stuff I wanted to make it have a kind of different focus.

It may be a good idea for you to use MoI in combination with one of those other programs - maybe use MoI for your early process stuff where you want to draw more freely and use one of those parametric MCAD programs when you get to more nailed down designs...

But it's important to use the right tool for your particular job - if history is a major criteria for you, then MoI is probably not the right tool for the particular task that you're trying to do - it's not really a focus for MoI to be an exact drop-in replacement for a production MCAD system like SolidWorks or things like that. If you're trying to treat it like that you may be using the wrong tool for your job, kind of like trying to pound in nails with a screwdriver or something like that.

- Michael

I have heard, that Icem Surf, now a part of Catia, has been made meanwhile fully historical.

In my opinion a history should be more important then circular selection.

Rudl

Hi Rudl,

> In my opinion a history should be more important then circular selection.

They're not really comparable though in the quantity of work involved to implement them - there is much much more work involved for history.

- Michael

And we have yet local history of a function ;)
It's not so bad!
Else you can use this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEbHjpqpL-8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IspWcu_RO8U
but not sure that is the same price and same use ;)

Hallo Pilou,

I know the history, and I like it´s behaviour because of it´s easyness very much.

RUdl

Hi Pilou,

just checked the Creo Elements Pro page and to my surprise the fully featured Home Vers. for non-commercial use is cheaper than MoI!

http://store.ptc.com/store?Action=DisplayProductDetailsPage&SiteID=ptc&Locale=de_DE&Env=BASE&productID=210631300

Regards
Stefan

I don't know if a Student version is different than a personal learning edition where you have some limitations!
Where you have just the "modeler" section and not the applications!
You can import Moi files inside as STL format ;)

Use is less fluent than Moi ;)

PS Moi has also a student version ;) http://www.studica.com/MOI3D/