Hi Nan,

re:
> Hi, wanted to see the points in order to rescale stuff (e.g. making the blocky end thing shorter
> etc.) This was just an example, the usual usecase would be direct editing of stuff with
> precise dimensions.

MoI is actually not very good at direct editing of stuff after you have constructed it.

It has a lot of functionality for making things with precise dimensions while you are drawing it, like you can enter in lengths, widths, radius values, etc... while you are drawing curves to get a precise shape right when you initially create things.

But editing of things that have already been constructed is a different area and it's not something that MoI handles very well right now.

There are some other CAD programs that can do that better, SpaceClaim is a pretty good one for what is called "direct editing" in CAD, or also check out Fusion360.

- Michael

Ok, thanks, might play around with those. Being focussed, doing one thing really well is probably one of the biggest advantages of MoI :)
Edit: Oh, SpaceClaim is a little outside of my budget I fear... But for a start Blender with the Construction Lines plugin is probably good enough for mesh stuff.

Hi NaN,

> Ok, so the face dimensions are much larger, so it doesn't only affect the local area but the entire object?

Yes that's correct that the dimensions of a face's "underlying surface" can be much larger than its current active area. You'll get that when you do things like booleans. After the boolean is done the surfaces all stay the same and they get new trimming boundaries on them.

When you pull around surface control points in a situation like that then it's pretty easy for the modified surface to no longer intersect with the other ones that it was intersected with to produce the current trim boundary.

So usually in CAD programs you do not form things by moving around surface control points as you do in a poly modeling program.

You can do it in some areas but not just anywhere.


> (Different from the example in the faq, where unaffected points of the same object were editible?).

Well it's the same as in the FAQ - the FAQ shows how editing control points on a plane where there was an edge formed by the intersection between the plane and a cylinder will open up a gap.

- Michael

Hi Nan,

> Being focussed, doing one thing really well is probably one of the biggest advantages of MoI :)

Well it keep things less complicated and that helps make it easier to use for the things that it is good at like quickly drawing stuff.

In the future i do want to add more functionality for editing things after construction though. In CAD it's a fairly complex area to handle well.

- Michael

The second biggest advantage of MoI is probably your support! Thanks, much appreciated, less fog, more clear sight now! :)

Definitely! Michael should get a support award.

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