Thanks for all the feedback Carlos!

> From my experience i got several no layered PDF files from others, but i think its a case
> of not tick on 'Perserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities' when saving as PDF, otherwise it
> export with layers.

That "Preserve Illustrator Editing Capabilities" thing makes Illustrator save a big chunk of private undocumented information in the PDF file that contains illustrator specific data. Illustrator uses that method for making layers come in through PDFs but it only works for PDFs saved by Illustrator itself, not from any other method of PDF file generation.

Since that Illustrator specific data is not documented there isn't really any way for a separate program (like MoI for example) to get layers into Illustrator by PDF import only since Illustrator does not read them in from the regular PDF data.

But it does read them in from the AI v8 format, so that's the format you'll want to use for the transfer if you want layers to come over.


That's pretty weird that CS4 does not work. That's good to know though.


> One question concerning the rendered image: Looks the material main color is a Grey.

It just happened to be in this case since all the objects were using the default style. The shaded colors will come from the style assignment and look the same as they do in the regular MoI viewport display.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> The shaded colors will come from the style assignment

That is is great, it will be very helpfull to have different colors on different parts, visually communicating some functions or how something have to be constructed.

Its great to comunicate with others.

Thanks.

Carlos

Hi Michael, the AI file works great in Illustrator CS6 64bit.
The bitmap doesn't import in Xara but I don't care since it works so well with a layered PDF.

Maybe adding a bitmap option in the export dialog would be nice?
Those who don't know the viewport export scripts or can't work with PDF might find it handy.

On the other hand the export dropdown list will start to be crowded.
Some programs have 75 choice in the dropdown, having to search each time for the right one is somewhat annoying.
An idea would be to separate export types; Solids, Polygonal, 2d.

Marc

For me, it's exactly what I need. Thanks michael

Hello,

That's great news that it keeps the points as is. On a related note, does MoI have a curve extrapolation function? In the areas where the hidden line generation doesn't completely close off the area or it gets a bit wobbly I import that portion of the AI into Rhino and VSR has a very handy extrapolation function to extend the line so it can be trimmed. Another handy tool that is free for AI to connect lines with curves is SubScribe from Astute Graphics if you don't want to pay for the other plugins.

Hi Marc,

I've got Xara 8 & 9 (Photo & Graphics Designer versions) & everything imported just fine.
See attachments.

Hi Marc,

> Maybe adding a bitmap option in the export dialog would be nice?
> Those who don't know the viewport export scripts or can't work with PDF might find it handy.

You mean something like a "PNG Image (*.png)" just directly listed in the file dialog for Export or Save As?

That would certainly be easiest for someone to find. But yeah (as you mention) the downside is if other image formats were also added there it would start to make the file dialog dropdown get clogged up and after some point it gets difficult to find things in it.

For direct image saving I'd been thinking that there would be something like a Render command that would generate an image and the image would be displayed on its own new window. Then there would be a file menu on that window where you could save the image to PNG/TIFF/JPG/etc... That would probably be something for v4 since I'm hoping to wrap up v3 fairly soon here.


> An idea would be to separate export types; Solids, Polygonal, 2d.

Yeah having image saving under some kind of Render function (probably with a Render tab on the pane for accessing it) would help to put 2D bitmap images into one kind of separate category.

It's kind of hard to introduce categories into the regular export without making things take extra steps, like it probably wouldn't be nice to have a separate dialog pop up before the file name one that made you pick between Solids, Polygonal, or 2D type exports before you got to put in the file name.

- Michael

Hi OSTexo,

> On a related note, does MoI have a curve extrapolation function?

There is a curve extension function under Edit > Extend. If you want 2 curves to meet, you can select both of them, then run Edit > Extend, then at the prompt to select boundary objects you just right-click or push Done at that point to tell it you want to do a "mutual extend" where they extend to each other, rather than extending them to a third boundary line.

- Michael

Colin wrote:
> I've got Xara 8 & 9 (Photo & Graphics Designer versions) & everything imported just fine.

Wow there seems to be a lot of variation in program support for these various things. Kind of a lot more differences maybe between Mac and PC versions and even between different versions of the same program than I would have expected.

- Michael

"""""""""""""""""""""""I've got Xara 8 & 9 (Photo & Graphics Designer versions) & everything imported just fine.
See attachments."""""""""""""""""""

Hi Colin,

Yeah PDF works great in Xara! I'm surprised to see other Xara users here.

I was referring to the AI test file import in Xara, it didnt import background file.
As said it works with PDF so no problem there.

Marc

""""""""""""""""""""""" I'd been thinking that there would be something like a Render command that would generate an image and the image would be displayed on its own new window"""""""""""""""""""""

That's a great plan!

Marc

Hi Marc,

> I was referring to the AI test file import in Xara, it didnt import background file.
> As said it works with PDF so no problem there.

So for Xara it will be use the PDF import - that brings in the image and also layer assignments.

Illustrator won't read in the layer assignments in PDF so if you want layers to come through you'd use .ai format for Illustrator instead.

And it seems that certain versions of Illustrator (seems to be around CS3 or CS4) have some problems with the images but the current versions seem to be behaving ok.

- Michael

Don't forget the free Xara Xtrem5 ! ;)
http://www.xara.com/eu/specialoffers/designer/

Wow, this is an unexpected really cool surprise... The first thing I thought when I saw it was, is this feature finding its way to the silhou command??

Hi ed,

> The first thing I thought when I saw it was, is this feature finding its way to the silhou command??

Which particular part do you mean?

Right now though I don't really have any plans for modifying the silhouette command, all this new stuff will be built directly into PDF, AI, and DXF format output for generating 2D drawings.

- Michael

I mean something like the make 2d command on rhino, the main difference (that i see) between the make 2d and MoI's silhou is that MoI doesn't have hidden line removal.

Hi ed, - if you want to get the hidden line curves back into MoI you can just open or import the PDF, AI, or DXF file that was just written...

What is it that you would be trying to do by generating the hidden line curves only inside of MoI instead of as an export?

I guess it could be possible to add in a "Make2D" like command for generating hidden lines but it would help if I knew why you wanted to do that.

In Rhino you have to do it because there isn't any way to otherwise make a hidden line view for exporting, unless things have changed a lot. It's a pretty clumsy workflow though, you do Make2D and now you have a bunch of curves sitting inside the same model as your original objects, then if you want to do something with them you have to try to hide the original objects and keep the 2D objects separate from them somehow.

- Michael

Ok, I think I've got the silhouette extraction working. This is for the Isodraw-ish type stuff, anyone interested in that might want to look at the PDF attached below to see if that's doing the right thing.

I thought I'd better make these as another layer of edges that sit on top of the regular ones, rather than trying to make edges kind of alternate between thick and thin on the fly. With them layered on top it will probably be easier to do touchups by erasing the thick ones and then still having the regular ones underneath.

In Adobe Reader you can use the Layers left-side pane to turn on/off different sections, this one has the background bitmap, regular lines, then silhouette lines.

It looks like this:





- Michael

I have been watching this thread with interest but keeping quiet, but as the thread and techniques have progressed I now feel like I have to pass an opinion and ask a question. The opinion I have is, those first two images output and posted by Michael to me looked the best, so this leads then to the question, can we still have that simple output method ?

Martin Spencer-Ford