Hi Michael,

I have two notes concerning the new beta...

Are you going to tune network surface command up so it can also handle non-intersecting curves? And what about some tolerance input for driving a surface? It would help users create a surface from roughly sketched curves.

For projecting I wish I can deselect unwanted projected curve by clicking on it (or in a different way) before command is done. It makes sense when curve is projected on both the closest side and opposite one (e.g. circle and sphere).

Petr

Spanish translation added.

New stuff translation added in the Spanish forum.

Enjoy it! :-)

Good job with the Network tool Michael. As simple as the image below, only the Network tool
could do it accurately. Of course there are other tools. You might want to try. ;-)

Btw, only four curves were used in this case. Three, lenghtwise, and one, crosswise, which is in the middle.

You could see these shapes in some mechanical part such as
the nose of an electric drill or handles.



Or as shapes to subtract from a boolean difference.

Hi Petr,

> Are you going to tune network surface command up so it can also handle non-intersecting curves?

It should generally handle non-intersecting curves already, although I have seen a couple of instances where non-intersecting curves will cause a crease in the resulting surface. I may be able to tune this up a but I'm not sure.

Do you have a non-intersecting network that is not working as you would expect? If so, please post it.


> And what about some tolerance input for driving a surface?

I want to work on an area related to this pretty soon, which is a rebuilding step for commands that need to merge multiple curves into one common structure. This will apply to Loft, Sweep, and Network. But I was planning on trying to do something automatically, instead of using any additional tolerance settings.

Do you have an example of the type of thing you would use the tolerance for?


> For projecting I wish I can deselect unwanted projected curve by clicking on it
> (or in a different way) before command is done.

I'm not quite sure how to set this up. Right now you are able to pick a point to define the start point of a new projection direction. Normally I can't do a "selection click" and a "point pick" click all at the same time.

I guess there could be another button that said something like "delete projections", but at that point it doesn't seem to be gaining very much compared to just deleting the unwanted pieces after the command is finished.

Any ideas?

Thanks for your feedback!

- Michael

Hi Michael:

Thank you for the new version really this very well hopes it continues growing
At the moment if it is possible to create designs 3D for similar footwear to Rhino or Delcam

I believe that MOI will be big


Best Regards

Juan Galvan

Hi Juan,

> At the moment if it is possible to create designs 3D for similar footwear to Rhino or Delcam

I don't really know very much about footwear design myself, but I think that probably the new Network tool from the last beta will help out quite a bit.

With that tool added, it will probably be easier now to follow some tutorials for Rhino or Delcam by using the equivalent stuff inside of MoI.

However, it is also possible that some things may be easier in those other programs for a while still especially if you are using some kind of plug-in or extension that gives tools that are specific to your field. Plug-ins like that won't be available in MoI for a while yet.

- Michael

Hi Michael:

Please looks at the following file totally in MOI

Best regards

Wow, that is looking great!

- Michael

Gordon specifications :)
Jonction's point are not necessary!!!

Hi Pilou - yup, I did some work so that it is not necessary for the network to perfectly intersect.

In that case there will be a type of averaging that happens.

Sometimes you may not get very good results if you make the curves be really very far from intersecting though, because in some cases that makes it difficult for MoI to figure out how to organize them into a rectangular grid structure.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>It should generally handle non-intersecting curves already...

Yes, it handles... but it's a funny story. When I sketched my firts set of curves for "networking" I couldn't manage to get anything. I looked into that and found out the curves didn't intersect so I supposed the command worked only with intersecting curves. I'm not able to repeat this situation, although I have been trying it :). If I encounter failure of network command I'll tell you about it.


>>Do you have an example of the type of thing you would use the tolerance for?

I'm used to driving a surface's complexity by changing a tolerance in Rhino when using "unsightly" curves as an input to create a surface from a network of curves. It seems to be quite useful feature.




>>I guess there could be another button that said something like "delete projections"

There is an issue of multiple projection I didn't notice previously. So I guess no changes in the current projection tool are the best.



Petr

Bug?
I can't make a sweep : select circles + the "free curve" (the curve alone)

If I copy/past the internal line curve generator of the sweep existing that works!
Is that normal? (history enable or not)

Another curious thing : same sort of figures: a free curve (snaped on the grid) + some circles (snaped on the grid and not "vertical")
the function sweep don't orient automatically perpendicular the "circles" on the curve at any times! ???
I launch the program at any time!
Sometime it's "flat", sometime it's good ???

Hi Pilou - there are 2 modes for sweep, "auto-place", and "non-auto-place".

Right now the mode is determined depending on whether the shape curves have any point of them inside the bounding box of the rail curve.

So imagine a box around the rail curve - if your profile shapes are inside that box (as one of them is in your file, the one that is closest to it), then MoI will not move your shapes around and will sweep them in their current orientation.

If all your profiles are outside of the box around the rail curve, then MoI will use "auto-place" mode and will rotate and place your curves perpendicular to the rail. This is a useful mode for doing things like a tube or pipe type shape quickly.

So if you want to use auto place mode to have them automatically moved perpendicular to the rail, make sure your profile curves are a little distance away from your rail curve and not next to it.

I would like to figure out a way to make this mode have some kind of switch or more controllable option, right now it is sort of hidden.


> Sometime it's "flat", sometime it's good ???

The "flat" ones are the ones that included the shape curve that was inside the box around the rail. MoI will not move your shapes around if they are closer to the rail because it assumes you may have placed them in a particular position.

Let me know if you need more details on this.

- Michael

Full understand :)
That was the solution of the mystery! ;)
Now that work at any time :)
And the fun of the thing is that you can move or modify the line or the circles (show points) for best controls of the sections or path!

So do you plan to have a function to draw the bounding box of a selection?

> So do you plan to have a function to draw the bounding box of a selection?

Eventually yes, but not for V1 though.

- Michael

A new little tut by Steph about pipes :)
http://tutoriels.steph3d.net/MoI/Tube01/tut.mov

Cool use of the helpers perpendicular :)

And of course you can also modify any circular section (size, position, form)

Does Moi will have a dedicated pipes maker?
For example in the automatic "auto-place mode" perpendicular section don't appear on the path (except extremities)

> Does Moi will have a dedicated pipes maker?

Possibly sometime later, not for V1 though. But I'm not sure that it is really necessary because of the stuff already built into sweep.

To make a simple pipe in V1 you can use the auto-place mode that you were just asking about - just draw a circle a distance away from the curve, and when you do the sweep it will automatically place it perfectly perpendicular to the rail curve for you. That's really pretty simple.

The nice benefit of this over a dedicated pipe tool is that it is more general purpose - it allows you to use other shapes instead of just a circle, such as squares, stars, polygons, or arbitrary sketched curves. Just draw them flat on the plane in a rough left-to-right order for multiple profiles.

It is true that a dedicated pipe tool has less steps, but it is more restricted to only circular shape sections and unless you're modeling something like a plate of pasta, the difference in time is not very significant. MoI's auto-place mode already makes it pretty easy to create a simple pipe.

But I would like to make some UI to give a bit more control over triggering the auto place mode though.

It looks like Steph would be interested in the new scaling rail function that I added a couple of betas ago - that allows you to guide the shape of a pipe by using one exterior additional guide rail instead of drawing a whole bunch of different sections. For example, here is a simple pipe constructed using auto-place mode:



Then applying the scaling rail (click the "Pick scaling rail" button inside of sweep):



There are several benefits over using the scaling rail instead of drawing many cross-sections. First of all there are fewer curves to draw (just 3 curves drawn in this example!) so it can be created faster. You also get a lot more precise control over the exact shaping because you more directly control the entire profile of the entire surface instead of trying to control it by adding different radii only at particular points. The scaling rail also makes it a lot easier to manipulate the shape by history edits.

So if he needs to make a lot of lumpy pipes like that, tell him about auto-place mode plus a scaling rail, that should make it quite a bit easier.

- Michael

> For example in the automatic "auto-place mode" perpendicular section
> don't appear on the path (except extremities)

Hi Pilou - that's not correct, auto-place mode will place perpendicular sections along the interior of the rail as well, not just only at extremities. For example here I have 3 sections. Just arrange them in a rough left-to-right order:



Each profile is placed perpendicular to the rail curve, spaced evenly along it. In this case the outside 2 curves are on the ends of the rail, but the middle ellipse is placed at the center of the curve. You can put any number of profiles in a similar way. The spacing between the profiles on the plane doesn't matter, they will get spaced in even increments along the rail.

But don't forget - it can be better to use a scaling rail if you want to control the size at different points instead of placing a bunch of scaled profiles. But if you want slightly different shapes (instead of only changes in size), then that's when you would do different profiles.

You can also use multiple profiles and the scaling rail in combination.

- Michael