Hi Michael,

Enjoy working with MOI!

This a second model done in MOI. This was done in just under an hour. All with a tablet and stylus, though I do like using the shift key to pan in 3D view. Rendered in Carrara5 (used preset scene) but for some reason not all the holes rendered. It shows up in wireframe mode so I know it's C5 rendering engine doing it.

Things I found:
- copy array? multiple copies?
- Rotate with a copy option?
-To keeps parts as a solid I had to make a copy of components and then boolean. When I want to copy and hide it I have select an item, make a copy, deselect it, re-select again (thus picking one of the two copies) and then hide. It would be great to simplify this.
- Grouping. To cut in the vent holes I had to select each one of the cylinders to boolean. Would be great to group them all and one entity.
- Text tool. I was going to add in the logo name from rhino but ran out of time. I wanted to keep this under and hour work time.
- Layers? Since I was trying to keep these are solids I have to make copies of different components. I had to hide these as I went a long. I would make a mistake by hiding something I wasn't suppose to and would have to show everything and then re-select and re-hide again.
- Simple color pallet to separate details?

Thanks again!!
-Dooki

...Hey Micheal, I just read you reply to other thread so disregard the reduntant notes in this thread. Thanks!

-Dooki

Hi Dooki, I'll just go through and comment one by one anyway.

> though I do like using the shift key to pan in 3D view.

I'll be trying to set this up for the next beta so you'll be able to have some control over this.


> - copy array? multiple copies?

I see you could have certainly used it for this model. This should be coming up shortly too.


> Rotate with a copy option?

The new beta has this - inside rotate you can use the control key to drop a copy, and there is also a "Make copies" checkbox as well. There will be a different kind of angular array tool coming up with the grid array one, for doing a specified number of rotated copies in one go.


> <....> It would be great to simplify this.

Could you please post a sample model of this one to illustrate it further? I kind of understand but it is not 100% clear.


> Grouping. To cut in the vent holes I had to select each one of the cylinders to boolean.

You should be able to do a window select when you're doing a boolean - probably for this one you should start to the upper-right side of the cylinders in the front or right view, then drag to the left to capture the tops of the cylinders. When you drag from right to left the box will show as dashed and that lets you capture anything that crosses the box.

Actual grouping is something that is a ways off, I want to see if it is possible to combine layers and groups into a more unified type of organization tool. This is one of those areas that will be missing for a while until it kind of firms up some more.


> Text tool.

I'd like to do this for V1, not quite sure when yet.


> Layers?

Probably not for a while, as per grouping above...


> I would make a mistake by hiding something I wasn't suppose to and
> would have to show everything and then re-select and re-hide again.

What if it was possible to undo a hide or even a selection change? One thing I have thought of is to keep some actions like this as undoable things, but they would get cleared out of the undo log whenever anything altered any actual geometry. This way they wouldn't fill the undo log up so completely, but still probably be at hand when they were needed.

Would that have helped?


> - Simple color pallet to separate details?

Probably going to drag my feet for a while on this one too.


Please keep the comments coming, they are really helpful, especially when you keep track of them right after a modeling session like this. Please don't get discouraged when I say that a particular thing is going to be a while, I just want to let people know what my current thoughts are. But the more comments I hear, the more I understand what problems people are running into and it helps prioritize things. Some pieces are just going to come slowly because the proper design for them hasn't revealed itself yet... :)

- Michael

Hey Michael,

-shift key thing= I personally don't mind this. That key combo is common in many packages. This is how I found out it worked in MOI.
- Rotate copy= I guess I was thinking about a multiple polar array. (5 copies @ 35deg) I used the copy option within rotate but I could only make one copy at a time.
- Grouping/boolean= OK, so in the side view I select the main body as my "base" object, then drag select all the cylinders for the second selection. Great! I didn't think about that.
- undo/hide= when I tried to undo the hide command I brought back an oject that I had previously deleted. In other words I would delete something, work a little, hide something and undo the hide, this would recall the deleted object. make sense?
- Thanks for the words on the comments. I'll keep em coming when I can and what ever happens happens!



-Dooki

> -shift key thing= I personally don't mind this. That key combo is
> common in many packages. This is how I found out it worked in MOI

Whoops, I got confused for a moment, I actually forgot that I put that shift + right drag for panning in there.

I don't know if you've noticed, but there is an auto-scroll mechanism for pan which kicks in when you move nearby the edge of the viewport.


> re: hide

Yeah, this is the problem - hide is not recorded as an actual undoable action right now. So when you do an undo, it doesn't care about the hide, it doesn't do anything for the hide and just goes to the to the last "real" action in the undo stack - that is something that actually created, deleted, or altered geometry.

Right now hide is considered to be about the same as selection - if you select an object and then undo, it doesn't undo the selection, it undoes the last changing operation.

I'm thinking of changing this for both hide and selection, so that if you make a selection or hide mistake, you can hit undo to step back to the previous state.

- Michael

That sounds good.

Tomorrow I wil be another day and another model...

I just thought of something else. Is there a way to recall the last tool tool or action. In rhino it hitting the space bar will recall and action. Just a thought.

-Dooki

> Is there a way to recall the last tool tool or action.

Not currently, but this won't be hard to add.

- Michael