Hi Mike,

though it's true I can do basically the same with Moi for the cplane thing but in SW I this command is pretty intuitive to use and it could be a nice addition. I would be plenty satisfied with a script that does pretty much with the same thing.

>Switching between flat views give you some measure of control... I personally would like the ability to go back to a pre-existing spline curve and start adding and drawing more points as if you didn't end it before. Currently you have to draw another curve snapped to the end and then Join and Rebuild.

I would find that pretty nice as well.

>There are ways to achieve this result. If your Loft contains a mirror set of profile curves, then the mid-point will we symmetrical. Often, if I want to Blend or create something that comes out exactly 90 degrees from the "mirror plane", I'll take the profile on the mirror line and Extrude a straight surface to the opposite side of the mirror allowing me to use Blend to create a tangent surface from the mirror.

Though I understand there are what I would call "workarounds" to do this in Moi, IMHO I think this constraint stuff provides a much more elegant solution to the problem. I understand as well from what Michael pointed out, that this kind of stuff would require a great deal of work which ever way you look at it.

>MoI has a lot going for it with it's current surfacing tools though. The new Iso-Curve Trim has turned out to be really helpful!
For instance, sometimes the edges of two surfaces are very long curves and fall out of tolerance at some places and there may be a few disconnected slivers in places along the seam that don't want to Join.
Just Iso-Curve Trim that problem area and the little split will often disappear.

The way I see this constraint stuff which is presented quite nicely in the video (beginning at 27:20 or just about) and where you also see pretty well the structure of a Nurbs surface being created. Basically what we see live is that a Nurbs surface is (always) a square surface with a more or less dense set of mesh like isocurve (probably) that is "fitted" using continuity constraint for each edge, when it's all done (for each edge) the surface is trimmed to those same edge and this give the us the pretty nice patch we see. All this tells me that the algorythm for this kind of stuff exist, now does the library Micheal uses for Moi have it ready to be used, that's another story. My guess is that it is not bundle into a single function and it would require Michael to create it. It's possible also that even continuity function required for this may not be implemented in such a way that they can be used as is for the function required for this kind of stuff and implies even more work.

As Michael pointed out in is reply, this would also require UI stuff that might not be so easy to implement. I just know enough about maths to know this continuity stuff in 3D is way above the competance of most people on this earth and well above mine for sure.

As I said before, when I saw this continuity stuff in the video I immediatly saw that this functionality would be a great addition to Moi but I understand a neet feature like that, however useful it may be, is definitely another story to implement.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> I understand we can create a cplane just as easy in Moi. I mentioned this feature
> of SW because it seems to work a bit like "magic" and I find this pretty nice feature.

I guess I'm not sure how it's any different than setting a CPlane in MoI ? Is it because there's some animation that happens during the view movement or something else?


> re re Fill- If I understand correctly, in SW when you set a constraint or a relation
> like is establish near 19:40 on the profile curve, we are insured it will be maintained
> all the way along the rail curve (or edge of the surface).

I'm not sure about that - the constraint at 19:40 seems to me to be about just making that one particular curve have a horizontal tangent, I don't believe it has anything to do with the entire surface at that particular point yet. It looks like the shape of the entire edge is modified around 21:25 when an additional relation is added to the entire edge - so as far as I can tell the curve constraint that you are referring to at 19:40 does not apply to the entire length of the generated surface just from that alone which is what you seem to be saying?

Right in that same area of the video it looks like there is an entire page along the left side hand of the application to control a zillion options for stuff - that's really exactly the kind of complex UI that I'm trying very hard to avoid having inside of MoI.


> re re: various constraints You mention at some point you wanted to add something
> like a property page and you mentioned as well, if I recall correctly, that you thought
> of using a dialog box in that specific case.

Yeah but such things are not what I'd exactly call "desirable" - I am planning on putting in a kind of dumping ground area where I will be able to put in a whole bunch of specific object tools in an object property page but that does not necessarily mean that I want that to be the new standard approach for doing a bunch of other things in that same way too!

Something that would require huge complex dialog boxes in order to function will tend to go on the back burner for quite a while as I hope to find other alternatives to do it better than that. That's basically one essential strategy that helps to avoid the UI from getting super complex and difficult to use.


At any rate, I do expect to get in a couple of new key tools that would help for doing this kind of stuff - one is an "N-sided blend", which would function fairly differently than the current blend - the current blend works basically similar to sweep where there are 2 rails and the sweep profiles are constructed by blend curves being created between the surfaces. An "N-sided" blend (which is called Fill in that video) will take a closed loop of edges and then fits a larger square surface patch that goes through those and then gets trimmed by those edges. It will actually work more by taking an initial plane surface and deforming that plane until it warps through those boundary edges, so it's fairly different in its construction method than the 2-sided sweep-like current Blend command. The tricky part is to make the plane deform in a nice way and not have things like undulations and ripples in areas where there are not any fit points.

Then the other main new tool needed in this general area is a "Match" tool which is about editing an edge of an untrimmed surface so that the surface is smooth with a neighboring one.

- Michael

>Then the other main new tool needed in this general area is a "Match" tool which is about editing an edge of an untrimmed surface so that the surface is smooth with a neighboring one.

Michael, you mean Match Edge would'nt work on the edges that are trimmed, which is 98% of what my models are made of?

Uh oh... Am I getting that right?

>The tricky part is to make the plane deform in a nice way and not have things like undulations and ripples in areas where there are not any fit points.

I, as well as other will jump at the chance to Beta test the heck out it when you create it! Sounds awesome!

I know it might be silly that I suggested a surface wrinkle "relaxer" tool, but if Jheri Curl works on hair, shouldn't something work on NURBS? ;-)

Hi Mike,

> Michael, you mean Match Edge would'nt work on the edges that are trimmed,
> which is 98% of what my models are made of?

You'll be able to match _to_ a trimmed edge, but the edge being modified will need to be a "natural edge" of the surface.

That's because match will work by a certain kind of surface control point editing, and on a trimmed edge there is not really any particular direct controlling connection between the edge and the surface shape.

On an untrimmed edge the surface and the edge are more implicitly connected together.


> I know it might be silly that I suggested a surface wrinkle "relaxer" tool <...>

That's probably what would be called a "surface fairing" tool and I would like to have that too, it's just probably a kind of lower priority thing that blending and matching.

- Michael

> You'll be able to match _to_ a trimmed edge, but the edge being modified will need to be a "natural edge" of the surface.

So the ends of Blends, Fillets, Sweeps and Networks should fit perfectly into that requirement.
Now that I think of it, I sure there's some instance, but I'm having a hard time trying to visualize when two trimmed edges would meet.

Often times, I'll do a procedure where after making two Blend surfaces side-by-side, they don't meet and there is often a gap, overlap or both. Because they are untrimmed natural edges, Match would be able to meet their edges square and tangent(ally) with no need to do any further surgery.

...I like. =-)

Hi Mike, normally you have things meet up at 2 trimmed edges as the result of boolean operations. Most of the regular surface construction methods generate untrimmed surfaces initially, the main expection being Construct > Planar and also end caps on things like extrusions.

- Michael

Michael,

> I guess I'm not sure how it's any different than setting a CPlane in MoI ?
> Is it because there's some animation that happens during the view movement or something else?

Though SW animates this, it's just decoration that we could do without but what I like about this functionality is that we just need to select a surface or a 3D curve and by clicking this icon, the view switches automatically normal to this surface or curve. I just think it could speedup the workflow.


Your right and again I missed a few things. The main idea though is still about constraint and or relation and especially, in case of curve, we can specify these constraint at each end independently and in the case of surface, we can specify these constraint edge by edge. Now implementing something like that a la Moi may be quite difficult if not impossible without a major shift in what makes MOI a moment of inspiration. I just like this concept of constraint and I'd like to have this in Moi if ever possible.



It's not the first time you mention this new "N-sided Blend" command. I'm sure it will be impressive and very useful. When you mention: "the tricky part is to make the plane deform..." it sound like you intend to use some form of iterative process to implement this. Does this mean the library use for this kind of stuff (Solid++ I think) doesn't have a function for this already? Just curious.

Felix

Hi Felix,

> what I like about this functionality is that we just need to select a surface or a 3D curve
> and by clicking this icon, the view switches automatically normal to this surface or curve.
> I just think it could speedup the workflow.

Do you mean only the 3D view would switch? Or do you mean the 2D Top view in MoI would switch?

MoI's viewports are set up somewhat differently than SolidWorks, since MoI has the multi-view system where you have separate Top/Front/Right views in addition to the freely rotating 3D view.

If you want to position the Top/Front/Right views, the CPlane tool already does exactly that.

It's overall bad for UI complexity to add in new icons that essentially just do the same thing as an existing tool, that's one way that the UI can easily become bloated and so full of icons that it's no longer easy to find stuff inside of it. Things like that can be implemented as plug-ins though, that may be a better fit for something like this.

I'm still not entirely sure what you are asking for though, because if you want to do 2D work right on that spot of the surface normal like I've mentioned several times the cplane tool in MoI will do that already, and if you don't want to do 2D work right on that spot I don't quite understand what the purpose of the view change would really accomplish.



> The main idea though is still about constraint and or relation and especially, in case of curve,
> we can specify these constraint at each end independently and in the case of surface, we
> can specify these constraint edge by edge.

That fits under what I was describing earlier about a "Match" command that would edit a curve or a surface to be smooth to another object. It will likely be more like an edit tool that adjusts the curve or surface and not quite exactly a "constraint" since constraint sort of implies that it's being used in some kind of history mechanism.


> Does this mean the library use for this kind of stuff (Solid++ I think) doesn't
> have a function for this already? Just curious.

It does sort of have one, but it has the problem that I described earlier that it tends to have quite a lot of undulations in the output surface. So it's not particularly useful as-is.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

about this SW "Normal to" command, I understand you might have difficulty understanding what I write, most likely because I have a hard time myself putting what I want to say in words, so I'll try again. When I saw the video I noticed the guy using this tool a few time and I though it would be nice to have one similar in Moi. Yes I know I could setup a shortcut to create a cplane and set it coplanar to the surface or curve I want to view strait on (normal to) and select the view that will show the cplane the way I want. Doing this in Moi represent a certain number of steps, mouse clicks and the works and yes it's not a big deal but I wonder if a command or script could be setup to do all this in as few steps as possible, 2 if possible, 1 to select the object we want to view "normal to" and the other to create the cplane (automatically) and swicth to proper (2D) view. All the work would be done behind the scene by a command or script maybe, that of course is up to you. If you think it's not worth the effort then lets just forget it. Just in case this help you understand a bit more, I usually works in a single view at a time and sometimes I need to setup a cplane to make work easier when the cplane is coplanar to some implied plane of an object I want to work on.

If I understand correctly, with the new N-sided blend command combine with the new match command we will be able to create "a la Moi" surfaces and apply some "matching" continuity with adjacent surfaces. As you noted, this requires a large amount of UI in SW most likely because SW combine (to) many options in all the surface generating commands. I assume the match command would work on any surface which ever way it was created, sweep, loft, revolve, etc. That way you wouldn't have to modify the UI of any of the surface generating commands in Moi. Your a genius!

Thanks for the info about the library.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> but I wonder if a command or script could be setup to do all this in as few steps as possible, 2
> if possible, 1 to select the object we want to view "normal to" and the other to create the
> cplane (automatically) and swicth to proper (2D) view.

Does this script do what you need? :

script: /* Set cplane and switch to top view */ moi.view.setCPlaneInteractive(); moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.mode = 'Top';

That combines setting the cplane and then automatically switching to the maximized "Top" view after you have placed the cplane.

It's a 2 click process - after you trigger it you can snap the base point of the orientation picker onto the surface you want to be normal to, then after that base point is placed you will be in the orientation picker stage where you can adjust the rotation of the plane if you want, do a right-click in this stage for your second click and then that will do it.

That saves you one single click about setting the view to "Top".

Right now there's no way to avoid the rotation-specifying stage when placing the cplane, but it only takes one right-click in the viewport to accept the default plane orientation, you do not actually have to go over to the "Done" button.



> I assume the match command would work on any surface which ever way it was created, sweep, loft,
> revolve, etc. That way you wouldn't have to modify the UI of any of the surface generating commands in Moi.

Yup, that's the idea.

- Michael