Michael, just noticed something...

It's not a bug, but a request:

When running the Extrude command on a curve or a line (not a surface) it wants to default in the Z direction to make a surface from the curve.
Sometimes it throws me for a loop when nothing happens right away in a non-Z view port. "Why always Z?" (I exclaim).

This is when you would normally implement the [Set Dir] option.

I'd like to suggest a couple of tweaks to Extrude (curve).

Allow for automatic direction setting to correspond with the ortho view you are in. Or at least in vertical and/or horizontal direction, so that something happens right away.
Or better yet, no matter in which view, allow for an automatic direction set according to which 90 degree axis direction you carry the mouse pick in from the origin of the extrude of the curve.

Nine times out of ten, this is usually what you want to do when extruding a curve. When you need a special direction, then the [set dir] button is where to go.

Hi Mike,

> When running the Extrude command on a curve or a
> line (not a surface) it wants to default in the Z direction
> to make a surface from the curve.

Actually it doesn't work like that - if the curve is planar it will extrude along that plane's normal, see the attached file for an example, note that extruding either of these curves does not result in going in the Z direction by default.

If you have a curve that is not planar, it will try to do a best fit plane to it, and then find which of the x, y, z axis directions has the closest angle to that and then use that axis direction. That makes things that are nearly planar but not quite have a reasonable default direction.

If you are only extruding just a single line and nothing else with it, then that's the particular case that will default to z, that's kind of a special case because there is no "best fit" plane to a line segment, there's basically an infinite number of planes that can contain a particular line (with the planes all pivoting around the line at different rotations).

Is it that case of extruding a single line segment the one that is getting you?

- Michael

Hi Mike,

> Allow for automatic direction setting to correspond with
> the ortho view you are in.

Doing this for all cases would have some pretty bad side effects.

Take a look at the extrude demo file that I posted above - if it worked the way you're saying here, then going to the top view and extruding the bendy curve to the left would result in an extrusion like this:



Are you really sure that you'd want that kind of extrusion to be the default?


Currently the default generates an extrusion along the curve's plane normal, it doesn't matter which view you are in. So you get an extrusion like this:





That certainly seems like a lot better default direction for that curve rather than doing a view-dependent one - a view dependent direction for a curve like that will make a weird self-intersecting pancake flattened type result.

- Michael

jpaluck,

thanks for your advice and those pretty good images of your work.

I think I mentionned I was going to give Blender a good run and I think I've potentially found the ideal tool for me. There's an add-on called BSurfaces and this thing basically those magic for both modeling and retopo in combination with either Curves or sketched strokes (grease).

I seriously think, especially for retopo, I wont find something easier to use then this. see this link http://vimeo.com/26339130 Though I still have quite a bit of learning to do, I think the worst part will be "training" myself to become somewhat more productive. Basically, say I did something in Moi, my prefered program, export it in Blender, now I couldn't care less of quads and or triangle anymore, use BSurface in combination with the grease tool to obtain a nice topology to work with and go on from there with the various tools Blender as to offer like sculpting, proportional editing and the works.

When I become more verse with the retopology route, I'll try to do some modelling directly in Blender using the same basic tools. I was a teacher in another life and I know very well the route one as to take to acquire the required skills to do this kind of work. I also know that having good skills at whatever doesn't make you an "artist" but with every artist you will find, you can be pretty sure he/she as pretty good skill at what he/she does.

This is the main reason I don't want to spent money in software at this time, I need first to learn a lot of things say at the theorical level, then I'll have to acquire the skills to do what I want. If I realise that I can't then so be it but if I can, the next step is, can I be an "artist" at this? If no then again it will probably be the end of this for me and I'll either do something else or maybe I'll try to find someone willing to sell me is work with exclusive rights on then.

Currently, I do this kind of work here:





It's basically hand made including the coloring and finish, it's a real pleasure for me to do that kind of work but it takes forever. The worst case scenario for me is that I'll just keep doing similar work but I'll try to make more then 1 per year, I think I have an idea for doing this a little bit faster.

Maybe next year, I'll do something like this one below, I've already done the design except obviously for the carved details and all in Moi of course.



While writing this, I had kind of a flash and it all became very clear to me. I know exactly what I'll do from now on. In case you wonder, it will have nothing to do with carving, I'll stick with stuff I can do in Moi and that's all it's going to be.

Many thanks to you and other folks here,
Felix

Michael,

Well thanks for the detailed clarification!

This is something, I guess, happens so seamlessly that I never noticed it.
In fact, it was a planar line, and I was getting this bold, white colored guide line that was acting unwieldy. That's been a sign that the line was being extruded in a direction perpendicular to the current ortho view.

I definitely think that moving a non-planar curve according to it's "best-fit" normal direction is the way to do it. So very good then! :-)

And there is always the [Set Dir] button.

Felix..beatiful amoir

I am repeating myself ...
My top priority is dimensions and general text.
My work is mostly architectural and after the design work is done I would love to continue working in MoI through the working drawings.
cheers,
eric

I don't think Moi, even with dimensions is suitable for working drawings, particularly for buildings. Wouldn't it be better to do your design in MOI then export it to Revit for final detailing and drawing production?

Not just for architectural. It is suitable for all manufacture related designs. As well as exporting something into Revit for 6000$ to put dimensions ? No way :O ??? Not to mention that Revit is a useless product I hate, hate, hate. The company where I used to worked they modelled the Apple Centre some weeks ago by Revit. They couldnt rotate the model at all ! I love Moi ! Dimesions are important even If it is basic. So useful for every documentations when we provide plans to manufacturer. Particularly I mean product design. But. Hatches would be useful too.

Drawings need to be to DIN standard. This would be a lot of work to put in to MoI.

I find Rhino's drafting abilities quite adequate for smaller architectural projects and presently just switch to it when I am ready to go with 2d working drawings ... but I would rather stay in MoI if I could. A dxf export would also help as there are a number of inexpensive drafting programs available that will do very adequate 2d drafting. I used AutoCAD for twenty years but now it is too expensive for the relatively small projects I prefer and when I have to produce .dwg files many low priced clones are just fine.
But ... I would love to just work in MoI if it were possible. On the other hand ... if it is really too much to expect from MoI I will happily export as needed.
cheers,
eric

I second the request of basic drafting tools. There are three basic things i would like to see in MoI 3: dimensions and text, line type and thickness and hatches.

How about a 2 distance fillet as in the chamfer command
cheers
shayne

Hi shayne,

> How about a 2 distance fillet as in the chamfer command

How would you want the fillet to be formed? I don't think it is possible to put in a circular cross-section in between 2 different radius values.

See here for some previous discussion on this:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3713.3
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3287.15
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2259.12

- Michael

What I mean is apply a fillet to an edge but have 2 measurement distances available
Then I guess you would need a way to control the bulge of the curce also




To cut the above variable distance fillet to a curved object gets very difficult

thanks
shayne

Hi shayne - it looks like in your example there you've got an ellipse for the rounded shape?

That works great for something that meets at a 90 degree angle like that particular case you are showing there, but I'm not sure how it would work in the more general case of surfaces that meet at other angles to each other.

See here for a description of that problem:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2259.12

Also since it's kind of unusual as far as these things go, as far as I know the geometry library that I use to calculate the fillets does not support that style of fillet creation - another thing that's a lot more difficult than just the simple case you are showing there is when multiple fillets collide into each other and corner patch pieces need to be calculated to glue them together smoothly.

So I mean I guess it could be possible to make a special fillet that only worked when filleting just one edge of a box like you are showing there, because that special case happens to avoid these various issues, but then that would probably confuse a lot of people when they tried to use it in a whole bunch of other non-box situations and it didn't work properly on anything else other than a box...

- Michael

Thanks Michael
I understand the complexity now

How about a bend command






The yellow centre twisted solid can it be deformed to bend or follow the profile curve next to it ?

ps love the twist command

I notice on http://moi3d.com/wiki/Wishlist that the above requests already feature

Ok I'm dumb , figured out how to use the flow command :)

thanks
shayne

Hi shayne,

> The yellow centre twisted solid can it be deformed to
> bend or follow the profile curve next to it ?

Yup, you can use the other new tool in V3 "Flow" to do that kind of bending.

Flow allows you to deform an object from one "backbone" curve to a new backbone. You've actually got this all set up in your file already, the base backbone will be the line running down the middle of the twisted object and the target backbone is the curve off to the side that you want it to follow.

To produce the bend, select your twisted object, then run Transform > Deform > Flow (it's right next to Twist), then select the center line as the base curve, and the bent one as the target curve and you'll get this result:




By default curve-to-curve flow will preserve the current length of the object, mapping distance traveled along the base curve into distance traveled along the target one, with the overall length of the object being unchanged. There's another mode you can activate by using the "Stretch" checkbox option in curve-to-curve flow which will instead map percentage traveled along the base to percentage along the target instead.

If you wanted to make the twisted object take up the full length of the bent part, you would shorten the base line a bit so that it was flush with the ends of your object and then use Stretch mode.

EDIT: Ok it looks like you got Flow handled already...

- Michael

And re: Bend - right now I don't think that there will be a separate Bend command, since you can already use Flow to do bending if you just use an arc as the target curve, and it's also far more flexible since you can use any kind of curve you want for the target shape.

- Michael

Michael,

I would really like something to be able to group objects together and handle them as a unit. I understand this can become quite complex but I'd be happy even with something relatively simple.

I suppose that ideally a "group" would allow for a group of groups where each individual object and subgroup keeps it's properties. A named group, say a "door" with all of its parts could be tagged as the left, right or whatever "door" and not necessarly become a distinct object. A mechanism to distinguish type of "copies" of a group, say a "cloned group" would be an exact duplicate of the original this would allow the possiblility of editing individual part of a group and update all "cloned group" automatically. Another type of group could be allowed such that edits are not updated automatically but on demand, here I'm thinking of my left and right door again which may not be 100% symmetrical, say for example that the right door as an additional part that serve as a stopper for the left door but beside that part every thing else is symmetrical so edits could apply only to corresponding parts in those groups. Say for these doors again, this time not only the right door as an additional part but some parts are could be distinguish further like say a left and a right hinge and of course at this time we could setup a different style to the hardware parts of the door such that it's easier apply the proper material later on. One last thing I'm thinking of for my ideal doors "groups" again, it would be something like tagging individual part in somekind of hiearchy say

door.right -> right-hinge.001.brass or right-hinge.top.brass
right-hinge.002.brass or right-hinge.middle.brass
right-hinge.003.brass or right-hinge.bottom.brass
crossmember. top.002.walnut *** this part is a mirrored copy of door.left -> crossmember.top.001.walnut
...
panel.top.002.walnut *** this part is a mirrored copy of door.left -> door.top.001.walnut
...
etc.

Then of course, some means to create a bill of material for these doors. This could go on and on but as I said earlier, this would be the "ideal" group thing for me, maybe in another life.

For now I'd be happy with a much simpler grouping mechanism that would be useful both in Moi and on mesh exports.

Thanks,
Felix