Hi all.

here is something I would like to see in V3. In the file I supply, you can see on the default style we have 4 surfaces, on union we have the union command applied, on join we have the join command applied and both give us a solid. But I would like the option to create a solid more like the Final result style shows, where there is a pretty nice and clean solid with no multisegment edge and basically no undesired edge and of course no seams.

May be it could be a kind of solid rebuild kind of command. This is the way I think Michael would implement such a thing.

Regards,
Felix

I am still hoping for some basic 2d text and dimensions ... so that 2d drawings in MoI can noted without using another program.
cheers,
eric

Hi Felix,

> But I would like the option to create a solid more like
> the Final result style shows, where there is a pretty nice
> and clean solid with no multisegment edge and basically
> no undesired edge and of course no seams.

Being able to remove edges between surfaces means that the surfaces need to be combined into one larger single surface.

That becomes difficult when the surfaces are touching at internal trimmed edges rather than at a natural edge of their underlying surfaces.

Please see this FAQ entry for some more description on trimmed surfaces and underlying surfaces:

http://moi3d.com/wiki/FAQ#Q:_Why_does_show_points_work_for_some_objects_but_not_others.3F

In your particular case here it looks like you want to have the edge removed between these 2 surfaces:



But look at how the control points of the upper planar surface are positioned - (use edit>separate to break it into a single individual surface and then you can turn on its control points):




Then look at how the control points of the rounded side piece are positioned:




So you can see there that the top planar surface has just 4 control points for its surface and they are not located anywhere near the actual edge - that's because that's a trim edge. Trim edges mark regions of a surface that are holes or cut off areas.

So because those 2 underlying surfaces have no alignment between them in their surface control point grid, there isn't really any way for MoI to glue them together into a single surface - to make a single surface means to make one single rectangular control point grid out of them.

A rebuild that would do that would be trying to rebuild the surface only by looking at its trim edges and not by looking at the actual surface itself - that kind of rebuild would be sensitive to all kinds of variations in edge topology and would be quite difficult to implement...

Anyway, I just wanted to give you some explanation of why that request is quite difficult to achieve.

In your final example it looks like you've used a totally different method to create that, probably something like a revolve? It's very difficult for a computer algorithm to be able to sense stuff like that to try and recognize that a revolve of some larger edge would work to rebuild those surfaces - just in general things that rely on judgment are difficult to implement in a processing algorithm without stuff like artificial intelligence.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I didn`t do any trimming on purpuse or by myself, so I`m surprise to see that the planar command did this. I understand Nurbs are a different breed then meshes and I believe I`ll have live with those kind of particularities.

Basically I created the profile of the top and bottom surface used planar and then blend them together. After your reply I tried to shrink it but the rectangular control point setup stays it`s just smaller.

If I understand correctly, there is basically no way to work around this natural behaviour of Nurbs except by building the part differently as I did with the final part.

I think you have planned something like a property page, would this provide a mean to "hide" these kind of edges and also the seam type of edge and that these properties wouldn`t be affected by other commands that control the visibility of object? In other words, something like local properties can not be affected by higher level or more global properties?

As for the multi segment, I understand better now where they come from and if I don`t like them it`s my problem...

Thanks,
Felix

MoI is a great modeling app... My 5 wishes are:

1. Better history handling. I really love Max's modifiers stack and the way it works.
2. Object grouping and named selection sets.
3. Material and texture handling. Maybe an option to create shadows for better presentation.
4. Some more classic commands like bend, taper etc... for simple transformation
5. More 2d functions like dims and text for better communication and presentation...

Hi JTB - for named selection sets you can currently assign a name to any selection of objects. Do that by clicking on the name line in the properties panel:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference11.htm#propertiespanel

Once you have assigned a name, it will show up in the Objects section of the scene browser and you go to there to do various actions like hide it, lock it, and also select it.

So using that method you can set up a name associated with a set of objects and then go select that same set later on - does that cover what you are thinking of for named selection sets?

- Michael

Thank you... I'm getting old!!!

I really need/want a shear/skew tool, unless there is a way to currently do this that I don't know about.

I would also love a non destructive fillet command. I usually get my shapes built and then I feel this great anxiety when I fillet the edges because there is no going back! I know I can have a version of the object that hasn't been filleted, but it would be great to have some sort of non destructive filleting, that would let you undo it at any time in the future.

Michael, I second that on the Shear(Skew) tool. Could work like the scale tools on the side panel. Doesn't have to be part of the on-View handlebar setup.

On the same token, an adjustable Taper tool as well.
I think both would work on a simple transform calculation.

Andy, check this out:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4382.1

I think they could work by making just a button that activates 3d grips like the 2d that already exists, even better if you right clic one of those 2d grips the 3d ones could appear!

Recently I've been many times in the same situation: I have 2 or more curves and I want to draw something (a polyline, a circle or an interpolated curve) that touch those curves but with all the points sharing a single plane. What i have done is to copy those curves, trim them with a plane and then used the end points of that new trimmed curves for snapping the thing I want to draw. Those are a lot of steps for something as simple as drawing a circle.

What do you think about this feature?: Making two construction lines that starts on the same point makes a temporary cplane. I think this could be useful in many situations not just the one I described above.

Doesn't the "CPlane" command already do that?

If you place Construction Lines where you like, you can use this:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#KeepCLine
to keep them in place.

Hi Andy,

> I really need/want a shear/skew tool, unless there is a way
> to currently do this that I don't know about.

I am planning on having a Shear command as part of the Transform > Deform tools.

In the meantime you can make a shear happen by using the new Flow command.

To do that, draw a plane using Draw solid > Plane, placed under your object, and then copy the plane off to the side. Turn on control points for the copied plane and drag the upper 2 points over to create a sheared plane like so:



Now select the object you want to shear, run the Transform > Deform > Flow command, choose the plane under the object as the base surface, and the sheared plane as the target surface and you'll produce a shear like this:





> I would also love a non destructive fillet command.

I'd like to have that eventually as part of a deeper history mechanism. It will require quite a lot of work so I'm not sure exactly when that will happen.

In the meantime if you need to edit fillets there are some other programs like SpaceClaim that can help you tweak things like that more easily right now:
http://www.spaceclaim.com/ - you should be able to load your MoI model into SpaceClaim (copy and paste between them also works) and it has methods for editing fillets and also tweaking things like pulling or angling a face.

- Michael

Hi ed,

> Recently I've been many times in the same situation: I have 2
> or more curves and I want to draw something (a polyline, a
> circle or an interpolated curve) that touch those curves but with
> all the points sharing a single plane.

Like Mike mentions above, the View > CPlane tool can be good for this situation.

The key thing that helps is that there is a intersection object snap available where a curve intersects the construction plane. So once you place the cplane you should then have snap points at all these juncture points that you were interested in, you should not need to do the extra step of actually cutting all the objects.

The snap tag will read "CPlane Int" when that object snap is active.


> What do you think about this feature?: Making two
> construction lines that starts on the same point makes a
> temporary cplane. I think this could be useful in many situations
> not just the one I described above.

I've thought about that one before, and that could be possible to align things that are looking for a surface normal direction like drawing a circle but probably not for generating intersection object snaps like placing a full cplane will give you.

But also I worry about aligning normal directions automatically too much though, it can potentially make for bad results if the thing you really wanted was a circle that had its origin at that particular intersection location but was still aligned to the cplane.

Here's an example of that - here I use one construction line to drop downwards in z and the other to come horizontally and then draw a circle. But if it the 2 crossed lines formed a temporary cplane you would not be able to get this same circle anymore:



It's kind of safer to rely on setting a cplane to make that kind of stuff, since placing the cplane is more controllable with more options in it.

- Michael

Hi Ed, maybe though if the 2 construction lines shared the same explicit start point (which I see now is what you wrote) a normal aligned to them could be automatically used, that's likely to be harder to mess things up than just any 2 crossing ones like I was showing above.

I'll have to think about that some more to see if there are any scenarios where that may produce an unwanted result though too. It seems quite a bit less likely though since it would not kick in for "drop lines".

- Michael

Youre right the manual cplane is a better way to go instead of triming those lines, and go ahead testing the temporary cplane, I hope it has no downsides.

Great to here that a skew command is coming in the future, can I also hope for a simple bend? :)

I figured that history fillets would be something that would require a ton of work, but thought I would throw it in there anyway.

Hi andy,

> Great to here that a skew command is coming in the future,
> can I also hope for a simple bend? :)

I'm not sure about having a bend command as a separate thing, since you can already make bends happen using the current Flow command - you draw one base line through your object and then draw a separate arc for how you want it to bend, and then run Construct > Deform > Flow. Pick the line as the base object and the arc as the target object and it will perform a bend like this:





Is that the kind of bending that you are looking for?

- Michael

Yeah that's what I want. I realized you could do it with the flow command, but it seems simpler to have it as a dedicated tool.

Hi Andy,

> Yeah that's what I want. I realized you could do it with
> the flow command, but it seems simpler to have it as a
> dedicated tool.

How were you thinking that it should function?

If you wanted to have as much control over how you can currently draw an arc that would probably make for a pretty complex command since there are several different arc drawing tools each of which has options within it that would then be trying to get crammed into a single command.

Just in general it can actually be more simple in the long run to have a smaller number of more powerful tools rather than a bazillion little special purpose tools, because there has to be some way to put the zillion little tools in the UI and it is easy for one particular thing to get lost in a vast sea of UI.

So in that sense, adding more separate stuff also brings about complexity.

- Michael

Hello,

my favourites would be the following;

1. History, parametric solution (like in viacad)
2. Printing
3. Hidden line removal
4. Dynamic Section
5. Dimensions (basic only)

Ui would be better with customization of a separated rolling menu bar (horizontal or vertical at the edge of window)