Since the official release is not far, I would like to add some more wishlist items to my old big list and to clarify some things.
I am very happy to see that MoI community is growing fast.
Michael, I think some of them are important (at least to me) so I would appreciate your opinion

1. Twist and bend commands added. Is it possible? I believe they are very useful.
2. Update (or not) history is something I will never understand. Why isn't it automatic for everything? When would someone would need to disable that?
3. Almost 100% of the work we do in MoI is with boolean ops... So, history updating for solids created with booleans are necessary.
4. I would like to connect the curve and the solid (maybe with a Y/N option) because when I move an object, it is easier to pick the 3d solid than the curve

...more to come

> 2. Update (or not) history is something I will never understand.
> Why isn't it automatic for everything? When would someone would
> need to disable that?

Hi JTB - well, it can pretty easily get in the way of doing some simple things.

Here is one very basic example. Let's say a person wants to draw a trapezoid shape:




Imagine that they start by drawing one line for the top or bottom edge and then copy it to make the opposite edge. Then they turn on control points and edit one to make it a slightly different shape.

At this point if history was automatically turned on they would get messed up, because if history automatically applied to the copy, every edit they did of the original would update the other line to match it in size. That's not what they want in this case - even though the second line started out as a duplicate of the first, in this case they want to tweak them separately instead of having them connected to each other through history.

If history updating was literally turned on for everything, it would get in the way of making simple copies of an object that you intended to be used as the starting point for a new shape instead of a clone.

- Michael

Michael hi,

I still can't reproduce what you think as a problem.
I make a line. Then I make a copy. When, should I enable or disable history?
I try to make the trapezoid but no matter what I choose (history on or off) it is always the same. No lines are connected.
Also, is it a two way relation? I mean, If I make it work, I have to modify the parent object, the copy, no matter which one?
Generally I prefer to have all the options enabled and disable what I don't need.

You might hate me on this but I want to remind you an older post where I described you what is "copy" for MAX. I think it is a great idea you could adjust for MoI's needs.
Copy is 3 things for MAX.
*The simple copy, which makes a totally independent object,
*The reference that makes an object that will change accordingly with the "mother object" for the modifiers already applied but a new modifier will not be applied to all copies, just the specific object
*The instance that is 100% the same with the mother object and it will always be.
This would be nothing of course if the relation wasn't both ways. I mean you can change no matter which object and everyone else will follow.

I think (since there is no modifier stack or modeling history recorded in MoI yet) the simple copy and the instance is what you can have in MoI. This would be just an option in the copy command

P.S. I am only trying to help with my ideas and my very limited experience, I think MoI is a great program. I am very sorry if sometimes my english makes me sound like teaching something to you. I really hate when people do that. I appreciate your hard work and my intention is to help only.

Hi JTB,

> I still can't reproduce what you think as a problem.

Well, that's the point, those steps aren't a problem currently in MoI because history is not automatically enabled for all operations.

If history was enabled by default for everything, then that's when those steps would create a problem - the second line would change when you modified the original instead of the second line staying separate.


> Generally I prefer to have all the options enabled and disable what I don't need.

But unfortunately this doesn't apply to all users - someone who is not familiar with history could be surprised that the other side of their trapezoid does not stay in place and they might not immediately know where to go to disable the option for updating it. Imagine if the copied line was farther away from the original one, it would be easily possible for the other one to change without someone noticing it, leading to a lot of confusion when they later returned to that area of the drawing. These are the ways that too much automatic history can lead to confusing people and getting in the way.


> Also, is it a two way relation? I mean, If I make it work, I have to modify the
> parent object, the copy, no matter which one?

No, all history in MoI is a one-way operation, where you can modify the input objects to a command and then recalculate the output.

For example - if you have 2 curves and use the "Loft" command to create a surface, you can later on edit the 2 curves which were inputs into Loft, and then history will recalculate the Loft. But it isn't possible to edit the resulting Loft surface and have the changes apply back to the input curves.

I mean for example if you trim the Lofted surface, how would you expect that edit of the surface to change the input curves?

I can see doing something special specifically for instance copies where there could be a 2-way relationship. But that would be something very specialized just for that one operation and would not apply to history in general for any command.


> I think (since there is no modifier stack or modeling history recorded in MoI yet)
> the simple copy and the instance is what you can have in MoI. This would be just
> an option in the copy command

Yes, I can see adding this in to the copy command in a future version.

What would happen though is that the "create instance" mode would use a new instancing mechanism which does not currently exist in MoI. This would actually be a different mechanism than "History".

For version 1.0 of MoI, instancing and copying and just generally creating layouts of big scenes just isn't really the focus yet - the focus is just on modeling tools for creating a single object right now.


> I am very sorry if sometimes my english makes me sound like teaching something to you.

Don't worry, I don't think that! :)


> I appreciate your hard work and my intention is to help only.

It does help! And it definitely gives me a lot of ideas for future enhancements. Some of these will take a while before they will be possible for me to work on... Since I have such limited resources, there is just a pretty big limit on the amount of stuff that I can accomplish within a relatively short period of time. Some things just have to wait until future releases...

- Michael

> I make a line. Then I make a copy. When, should I enable or disable history?
> I try to make the trapezoid but no matter what I choose (history on or off) it is always the same.

Sorry I missed this part.

To create the problem situation here is what you do.

First draw one horizontal line. Then select it and do Transform/Copy and create a copy of it either above or below. Select the new copied curve, and run Edit/History and click "Enable update".

Now history updating is turned on for the copy.

Now select the original line, use Edit / Show pts to turn on points, and then deselect everything and drag a point of the original line. Now you should see both lines update when you drag a point from the original line.

With history for the copied line turned on like this, it is now difficult to make a trapezoid shape by trying to edit the first curve to make it longer or shorter, because when you edit it the second curve also changes to match it instead of staying in place. This is what would happen if history was turned on for all operations by default.

- Michael

Funny "story" indeed :)

>>>
No, all history in MoI is a one-way operation, where you can modify the input objects to a command and then recalculate the output.
For example - if you have 2 curves and use the "Loft" command to create a surface, you can later on edit the 2 curves which were inputs into Loft, and then history will recalculate the Loft. But it isn't possible to edit the resulting Loft surface and have the changes apply back to the input curves
<<<
No, I didn't mean that, I was talking about being able to change the original object by changing the copy of it... nevermind, this can't happen, I made some tests.>>>
Imagine if the copied line was farther away from the original one, it would be easily possible for the other one to change without someone noticing it, leading to a lot of confusion when they later returned to that area of the drawing. These are the ways that too much automatic history can lead to confusing people and getting in the way.
<<<
Well, we obviously disagree on that. Can't say I 'm right but you're certainly wrong! :-)) (just kidding). My limited as I often say experience makes it hard to change the way of working and thinking.


BTW, I discovered some problems with history that makes it very limiting.
1. I make a curve and then 2 copies. I enable history and everything works OK. If I move one of the copies, the relation with the initial object, breaks.
2. History doesn't work with array command.

A small suggestion from a newbie MoI fan :) Is there a way to have the icon for history change colors to identify when it is On or Off Michael ? This will let everyone know the status of the History feature. Sorry for giving you more work Michael.

Hi JTB,

> Well, we obviously disagree on that. Can't say I 'm right but you're certainly wrong! :-))
> (just kidding). My limited as I often say experience makes it hard to change the way
> of working and thinking.

Well, let me put it this way - if you want to make a trapezoid shape and you have 2 lines, and every time you edit one line the other one also changes to match the same size, that will make it difficult to create a trapezoid, do you agree with that?

To make a trapezoid you want each line to have a different size.


> BTW, I discovered some problems with history that makes it very limiting.

Yes - the focus of History for Version 1.0 is mostly to allow fine tuning for the results of surfacing commands like revolve, loft, and sweep.

History is limited in many other areas than this right now. I don't expect history to be really improved from this for the 1.0 release of MoI - if history is very important for what you need to do, then probably some other software than MoI would be a better choice until some time in the future when MoI's history has the additional functionality that you need.


> 1. I make a curve and then 2 copies. I enable history and everything works OK.
> If I move one of the copies, the relation with the initial object, breaks.

This is because moving the copied object is in effect similar to deleting the copy and creating a new moved version of it. The deleting of the object is what breaks the history chain. Eventually there will be a way to preserve history in this situation but this won't be ready for V1.


> 2. History doesn't work with array command.

Yes, History doesn't work properly right now with some commands that generate multiple outputs from one single command such as array. I do expect to improve this in the future, but this will probably remain a limitation for V1.

- Michael

Hi Phlatt5th,

> A small suggestion from a newbie MoI fan :) Is there a way to have the
> icon for history change colors to identify when it is On or Off Michael ?
> This will let everyone know the status of the History feature. Sorry for
> giving you more work Michael.

Well, that icon is only kind of temporary. It will be there for V1 but after V1 I'll be trying to get rid of it. Instead there will be some kind of "Object properties" panel that will show some of the properties of the currently selected object, that will also include something for history updates on or off in that properties panel.

- Michael

Well thank you Michael for taking time out to respond, I eagerly look forward to the all that MoI has to offer. The beauty of MoI is something else, it enables people like me who is an artist without training as an engineer or architect . As a late comer to computer aided design (1998) I feel less intimidated and think less about software and more of design dreaming similar to working on a sketchbook prior to fabrication. I experience a somewhat similar feeling using SketchUp and learning Rhino, but I gravitate to MoI more consistently since I discovered it a few weeks ago. I believe that as MoI progresses in its development with things like dimensions, history etc. People like me who are middle aged and find myself on an adventure and loving it on the horizon of art, engineering, ID and architecture etc. can add this to our tool set like a pencil. Thanks to all the members of this forum who selflessly contribute by sharing their various talents, I am learning daily. thanks to all.

Umm... does anyone know how much MoI v1.0 is going to cost? As a starving student anything over $40 means I can't eat for the week. I'd hate to get hooked on the BETA just to be crushed with a $300+ program, and have to walk away. *sigh*

Hi goney3 - well it is definitely going to be more than $40 - you can expect something around US $200.

- Michael

About how far from the final 1.0 release are you now Michael ? weeks or months ?

/ Magnus

Hi phlatt5th - Thanks, I'm glad that you are enjoying MoI! I'm very interested in making MoI feel like a comfortable environment where you get to focus more on your design and less on the software...

- Michael

> About how far from the final 1.0 release are you now Michael ? weeks or months ?

Well, it's difficult to say exactly but probably a couple of months yet. I want to finish the software this month, but after the software is ready it will still take some time to finish up documentation and some other stuff. Hopefully that won't take more than another month to do, so maybe 2 months?

It seems like every time I try to predict how long something is going to take, it ends up taking 3 times along but I hope that won't be the case here.

- Michael

Thanks for your reply Michael

Alright, that sounds good. Take the time you need and don't rush it, 2-3 months sounds resonable although i thought you'd need more than a month to wrap up the final stuff for the 1.0 release.

Hehe, it's tough to try to predict software developement like that. Better avoid doing that to not get a bunch of unhappy customers. :)

/ Magnus

> although i thought you'd need more than a month to wrap up the final stuff for the 1.0 release.

Well, basically I think whatever doesn't get done within the next month will just be postponed until the next version.

I want version 1.0 to be really good, but at the same time it already has quite a lot of useful stuff in it already... At some point I just have to stop adding stuff and just call that V1.

- Michael

True that, you could keep on adding stuff until that day the universe implodes and then never get to release it. :)

Keep up the good work Michael. We're all waiting to see what you got in store for 1.0

/ Magnus

> Keep up the good work Michael.

Thanks!


> We're all waiting to see what you got in store for 1.0

Well, you've pretty much seen it already, it will be fairly close to the current beta release. I'm just trying to squeeze in a few more tools.

- Michael