Hi Michael, I like the way MoI is improving but there are still two little big issues with the mac version that the windows one doesn't have. First, the offset command has improved its launch time but still it isn't as fast as on windows. Did you particularly worked on some area to make it better? Offset is a very common command for me and The other very annoying thing (discussed a little time ago) is that some times when you launch a command that needs some numeric input it doesn't highlight the input field automatically as it should when you type something. Those things feel really bad because the plus of MoI has always been the closest to perfect interface.

Aside from that I just started working on an architectural firm they are starting to like MoI, I'll see what happens!

Hi ed,

> First, the offset command has improved its launch time but still it isn't as fast as on windows. Did you
> particularly worked on some area to make it better?

No, nothing has been worked on in this area recently. But I think I have a fix now, I just investigated it and it turns out that the setup for the Offset command was making the command processing system mistakenly think that the command had failed initially and when that happens the command processor worker process will get flagged to get recreated on the next use, and that command processor spin up time seems to be a bit slower on Mac and so that creates a kind of lag.

I've attached an updated version of the offset command file which should fix the problem, to install the fix download the attached Offset.js file and then right-click on the MoI app and choose "Show package contents", and inside there go into the directory drive_c/moi/commands and copy Offset.js there overwriting the old version. After that repeated offsets should be speedier.


> The other very annoying thing (discussed a little time ago) is that some times when you launch a
> command that needs some numeric input it doesn't highlight the input field automatically as it should
> when you type something.

I remember the offset one being discussed before, but I don't remember this other one and I can't seem to repeat the misbehavior over here.

I'll need to be able to repeat this problem in order to look into a fix for it. Is it with one specific command that the auto-focus behavior doesn't work? Does it stop working at one certain point in a session with things that it used to work with before? Is there any pattern you can see for when you run into the problem like you see it after showing a certain dialog or opening a new file or something like that? Over here I did a quick test with basic things like drawing a line, drawing a rectangle and a circle, etc... and I could not see any problems.

I'll need more information and hopefully repro steps for this second one in order to have any chance at fixing it.

Thanks,
- Michael

Perhaps this is asked before but,

Is it not an idea to have (more) buttons in the panels? There are so many nice and cool scripts and so many shortcuts to remember.... I have setup shortcuts for a lot of scripts but the ones I do not use often I forget that I installed those...
It would be nice to use buttons instead of all those key combo's.
Or am I the only one?? I'm used to Cinema4D and there I can move any script or any command on a panel.


Peace,
Rich_Art., ;-)

Seems a customised UI was asked from numerous users from a long time :)

No..you're not the only one..i think Michael keeps to mantain a clean "zen" interface(this is one of the best features of this software)
but the scripts are growing very fast,so a choice to add a button somewhere in the UI just for your favourite scripts could be a good compromise
you know..press CTRL+A or ALT+X etc...and remember all them..it's not exactly a clean and fast workflow..

Hi Rich_Art, I definitely want to make the UI more easily customizable in the future. It involves a lot of work though, and currently I've placed a higher priority on other areas of work like bug fixes and new modeling functions.

I expect in the future it will come in some stages, like probably some kind of plug-ins menu where you would be able to see a list of installed plug-ins will probably be first at some point before some kind of more extensive UI customization mechanism.

Those things do not really block you from doing actual modeling though, so things like new modeling functions are just more important to focus on before that though.

The keyboard shortcut mechanism is also pretty primitive, and I'm definitely aware that it will need some attention too, like it should be possible to assign shortcut keys more easily by just pressing the key that you want to assign rather than typing in a label like the current method. Again, that's just a matter of priorities.

- Michael

Hi Mauro,

> but the scripts are growing very fast,so a choice to add a button somewhere in the UI just
> for your favourite scripts could be a good compromise you know..press CTRL+A or ALT+X
> etc...and remember all them..it's not exactly a clean and fast workflow..

Really the main solution right now for this is to just not install so many scripts, especially ones that you don't regularly use.

If you don't install things you don't need, then you don't need to worry about keeping track of them either... ;)

But actually though, it is certainly true that MoI is just not currently optimized for this kind of "lots and lots of scripts installed" kind of case. But it's all a matter of priorities, do you really want me to focus on a big overhaul of making an elegant UI for managing all your scripts or would you rather that I work on improving Blend so that you can actually construct surfaces better than you can right now?

Basically the existing keyboard shortcuts and scripts mechanism even though not ideal works well enough that it's hard for me to justify putting an overhaul in that area as a high priority.

If you're having problems remembering things you can always do something like write yourself a text document that helps keep track of things for you.

I do expect that it will get overhauled eventually, but I'm not sure exactly when.

- Michael

Michael:
<<do you really want me to focus on a big overhaul of making an elegant UI for managing all your scripts
or would you rather that I work on improving Blend so that you can actually construct surfaces better than you can right now?>>

no dubts...modeling tools !!


Michael:
<<If you're having problems remembering things you can always do something like write yourself a text document that helps keep track of things for you.>>

In my case i think it depends by natural aging (i'm 50+ two weeks...years old)

Hi Michael,

i'm also getting older and have a hard time to remember all those short cuts, but i don't complain.
I also understand that this might be a lot of work to integrate a proper solution for this in the UI layout.

Therefore my question, wouldn't it not be possible and much easier to add a pull down menu entry
called "Scripts" near the Window/Help Top Menu Bar, so that it doesn't add up to the UI layout?

Well, just a thought.



Best regards
Stefan

>or would you rather that I work on improving Blend so that you can actually construct surfaces better than you can right now?...


Hey guys! Careful! This improved Blend is my Christmas. ;-)

In Windows' system we have not this Menu line in normal use of Moi!
The "help" is on the page bottom button, you have not the same in Mac's System?

Hi Frenchy,

sorry, didn't thought about the Win UI!

On the Mac we have both the "Help" at the top menu bar
and like in Windows on the bottom right the help symbol too.







Regards
Stefan

I just tried the latest Beta.

Windows 8 professional x64 -retail
Asus EP121 slate
Intel graphics
Core i5 processor

I'm getting black surfaces, artifacts, freezes and all kinds of other graphic glitches. I really wanted to use the isocurve extraction but the viewport goes white when I try to select. Apparently this beta is unusable for me.

Thanks,

Isaiah

Hi Isaiah,

> I'm getting black surfaces, artifacts, freezes and all kinds of other graphic glitches. I really wanted
> to use the isocurve extraction but the viewport goes white when I try to select. Apparently this
> beta is unusable for me.

Was the previous v3 beta working ok for you? Or were you previously using v2 and this one is the first v3 beta that you've started to use?

The stuff you are describing sounds like video card related problems, I would recommend seeing if you can go to Intel's web site and download the latest video drivers for your video card and see if updating that has any effect. Typically the kind of stuff you're seeing is related to buggy behavior with the video driver.

One of the new features in v3 is the use of multiple CPU cores with the display engine, maybe you're running into some problem related to that. You could try disabling that by editing moi.ini (go to Options > General and push the Edit .ini file button), and in the [View] section find the entry for DisplayThreadLimit and set it to 1 so that it looks like this:

[View]
DisplayThreadLimit=1

Does that do anything?

- Michael

Hi Stefan,

> Therefore my question, wouldn't it not be possible and much easier to add a pull down menu entry
> called "Scripts" near the Window/Help Top Menu Bar, so that it doesn't add up to the UI layout?

So yeah like Pilou mentions the problem with that is that menu only exists in the Mac version and is not present in the Windows version.

Since MoI works on both the Mac and Windows as well I can't really use a design that would only work on one system and not the other.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I understand! I didn't thought about the difference in the Windows vers, sorry!

Best regards
Stefan

Thanks for the quick fix, I'll try it...

A sequence that always lead to the second problem (the numeric input field not being highlighted) is making a rectangle and then extruding it via shortcuts. Try to set up shortcuts for those two commands and then you'll see (hopefully) that you can't enter a numeric value for the extrude.

My Intel graphics drivers are up to date and I played with the number of processors from 1 to 4. Strange graphics performance every time.

Thanks,

IC

Hi IC,

> My Intel graphics drivers are up to date and I played with the number of processors from
> 1 to 4. Strange graphics performance every time.

Then it's possible that it's actually the latest driver that has the problem in it and you may need to install a slightly older version of the driver instead until the latest one is fixed.

Did the previous v3 beta work ok for you or was this one the first v3 beta that you had tried?

- Michael

The new offset command works perfect. I tried again on both the 2.5 and the latest beta and I cannot replicate the highlighting problem, but i found the thread where it was discussed earlier: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4983.1 If I find a way of pushing it to happen then ill let you know.