Thought I would finally add my top 5 to wish list:

1.) Deform face feature - similar to NX I-Form, X-Form or Pro-E WF Warp/Sculpt features.

2.) Draft/taper face feature.

3.) Volume and area analysis toolsets.

4.) Parasolid import/export.

5.) DXF (and/or) DWG import.

Not asking much am I? :-)

Michael T.

Hey, I remember this thread...


pssst::: (super blend tool) ;-) you didn't hear that from me.

Michael T: I think you would find the price of MOI going a lot higher if it it had Parasolid import capabilities. I recall Luxology mentioning that they had to pay a high licence fee to Parasolid to create their CAD importer. It was worthwhile for them because of their link with Dassault and Solidworks. They had a clear market to aim at. But that is taking Parasolid nurbs data into a polygon app. In the case of MoI you would just be substituting one Nurbs format for another, at quite a high price.

Hi SteveMacc,

Actually the Parasolid import/export request should have been placed last on my list. Could live without that one, plus there are other translators for it.

Good info to know about Luxology and the costing/license issues.

Michael T.

And finally number 5.. Extend surface tool.. This can be seen in a video here:

http://youtu.be/tv40aawZAY4

You can go straight to 30 seconds in to spare yourself the entire video.

Basially extending a surface continuing the edges curvature. Could be great for patch modeling.

I'll get my own beer, thanks!

As a side note, he has done a good job with his blend command in relation to what I was describing in my previous request about blend bulge. Hes has those options and a couple others.. He also has the UV thing I was just speaking about (Although not IsoCurves. I think he's rebuilding the surfaces) The video shows this just after the extend surface part...

Good luck Michael with your V3 work and future release!

Cool tut about tangency!

What is this seam problem? Haven´t seen it in MoI.

Rudl

Sometime the "seams" of the sphere avoid another function, so just rotate it by 90°

"""""What is this seam problem? Haven´t seen it in MoI""""""""""""

In MoI, those are on by default with a command like loft.. If you loft 2 circles. you can see them.. Sometimes, this needs to be adjusted.



MoI does some good extra stuff to be sure these are aligned well, but with some types of geometry, these are needed..

Hello Michael,

as MOI is meant for designers and artists it may be interesting to those to have an additional snap option on lines which indicates their 'golden ratio'.
This would help to construct according to this aesthetic principle without the need of any additional construction or calculation. And because any single
line will have two of those snap-points such an option should be made optional to avoid to much confusion if this feature is not needed or welcome.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio

Also interesting would be the implementation of the Fibonacci number within the array option to distribute elements unevenly yet according to this sequence.
Or the Fibonacci spiral within the Helix function.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibonacci_number

There might be other interesting construction principles of proportion or distribution used by creatives artists or designer which, automatically provided by
MOI, would help rule based concepts and artwork come to life more easy.

Does this suggestion match the idea of MOI?

Cheers

Jan

There is an unofficial script to create Vogels model.

There are two unofficial scripts to create logarithmic spirals, which are related to the Fibonacci spiral.

That snap would be useful!

That sounds interesting, yet I assume that working with scripts does not comes naturally to anybody, especially for the more creative and mainly 'visual' people.

I think if such functionality would be provided it had to be already implemented in MoI for easy and intuitive use. Otherwise all this interesting methods and
models would be accessible for the creative AND 'programming' affine people only ...

The question is, if such mathematical methods could be made 'intuitive' at all, even though they describe 'natural' formations.

@Lejan ;)

You can type an expression or formula into the numeric edit fields that are asking for distance or radius values.

For example when you are drawing a circle for the radius you can type 15/4*2 and the result 7.5 will be calculated for you.

Another example is if you're drawing a line, you can type <360/12 to set an angle constraint of 360/12 = 30 degree angle snap for that line.

You can also use functions like sin - for example typing in sin(45) will calculate the sin of 45 degrees. All trig functions take angles in degrees. Angle input in radians is available by prefixing the function name with an underscore character, for example: _sin(PI/4). Any of the functions on the JavaScript "Math" object are available for use, including: sin(), cos(), tan(), sqrt(), pow(), round(), random(), the constant PI, and also rad() which takes a parameter in degrees and returns it in radians, and deg() which takes a parameter in radians and returns it in degrees.

You can also type in a "relative expression" to modify the value of an edit field that has previously been initialized to some other value. To make a relative expression, start it with one of these symbols: + -- * / which will alter the value by the given amount rather than inputting a completely new value. So for instance in a grid size input field you can type /2 to modify the existing value by dividing it by 2. Note that for subtraction a double minus sign is used to avoid any conflict with entering in a regular non-relative negative value.

You can also use expressions for x,y,z point values. If your regional settings for the operating system uses a comma character as the decimal point separator for numeric values, then surround each coordinate with parentheses to separate them, for example: (2+2)(5/2-1)(5).


So just Press TAB and write (1+ sqrt(5))/2 and you will obtain 1.618034
Moi write only 6 decimals on external but must calculate on more in internal


You can do that before draw a line or after
- Click first point ...draw your formula (1+ sqrt(5))/2 (By TAB ...) click the second point aligned on any direction
or
- Draw any line : Select it and click on the Dialog Info Box (Right top corner pannel) write the formula inside the Length box

So for a Rectangle with a diagonal = Golden number (it's not Golden Rectangle just a construction for apply the formula of the Golden number)
Draw an horizontal line anywhere with the formula above (will be the diagonal)
Draw any Rectangle anywhere
Transform / Orient / Line-Line
Pick 2 opposed corners of the Rectangle
and click the 2 points of the Line ;)
If all is good you must have a Rectangle with a diagonal = Golden Number ;)

Many French people are asking for "Measurement drawings"

@PILOU

And that's exactly the point! Not many artists and designer happen to be rocket scientists and many of them are still looking back at their math class at school in sheer horror! ;)
Also 'creative folks' do not always like to read through manuals, faq's or forums like this one, even though it would help them without a doubt.

I do appreciate your detailed explanation and examples about the capabilities of MoI to process formulas, yet this way of finding any 'point of interest' for proportion or distribution
simply interrupts any free flow of sketching and will probably overstrain the majority of people who think mainly in their right brain hemisphere... ;)

Working with MoI I really like just because of its beautiful design in terms of simplification and I assume it is designed this way for all of those creative people who do not own
any degree in engineering or science and do not intend to get one just to operate their 3D design software somewhat properly.

I just started to look into Rhino for Mac and it became quite clear already how much more thought was implemented in MoI to get a good visual result from brain to screen intuitively.

Maintaining simplicity while keeping full functionality is a challange for any good programming design and takes probably a good portion of the overall development time.

For now you got me interested in using MoI for a calculator so I will practice your examples, but only because I recall that tan() got not much to do with some leasure time at the beach ... ;)

Hi Lejan,
Can you give me an example of how you would use the 'golden ratio' in artistry? It appears to be a math point of distribution. How would an artist know/need to use this intuitvly? Is it something taught to artists to use (maybe during setup or something) to do scene/figure scaling by eye or hand? I wanted to understand it's purpose.

Thanks

Hi BurrMan,

even though the definition of the 'golden ratio' is mathematic, it surly reflects certain principles of proportion found in nature.
Depending on your personal understanding of artistry, in mine, one of the main aime is to be 'pleasant' to many beholder.
So if you are in the process of 'composing' art or design you could certanly use principles which have proven valid for some
while to be seen as 'pretty' for many. Those principles can be found in nature, as we are part of and therefore influenced by it.

Symmetry, asymmetry, coloration, shape - you name it - can be found within nature and many of those are quite appealing
to most people.

By using such principles within artistry or design is certainly no guarantee that the outcome will be outstanding, yet it may help
to avoid total failure in some ways. Again, all of this depends on ones taste and liking, so there is not much to argue about if
such applied rules is good or not. In my eyes it definitely is a good point of orientation and to start from, yet it schould not supress
any other ideas possible.

The 'golden ratio' is also taught to artists, designers, architects as one way of harmonic subdivision of length, area and volume
and can be found in artwork and architecture of the past and at present.

If you are interested, you can find some examples in which it was used here:

http://jwilson.coe.uga.edu/EMT668/EMAT6680.2000/Obara/Emat6690/Golden%20Ratio/golden.html

Very famous in using the 'golden ratio' is Leonardo Da Vinci who also sketched the proportions of an human body which became
quite popular even today. Also in his well known painting 'Mona Lisa' this rule can be found, but again, this is not the reason for
the success of this picture, it just became, cleverly used, a part of it.

Thanks Lejan for the response.

"a proportional setup" method (Basically)

I have bookmarked this for myself. :)

Hi Jan - re: Golden ratio snap - that's definitely an interesting idea. The problem I see in your example image is that there is a kind of implicit orientation used in your snap there:



The orientation meaning that you've decided that the left-hand side of the line is the "start" and the right-hand side is the "end", and that the golden ratio spot should be placed just on the side towards the end I guess?

This kind of orientation dependency is somewhat problematic because I'm not sure what to do with lines at any arbitrary rotation for example - other snaps on to curves do not have that kind of orientation dependency on them so that could be a problem.

Another issue is that it's not necessarily good to have too many snaps that are automatically on all the time because snaps tend to prevent the free placement of points in a nearby zone to the snap. So this might be something that I would think more of targeting as a plug-in tool that you could activate with a specific shortcut key rather than being an additional totally built in snap.

Anyway, those are a couple of issues involved...

- Michael