Hello Michael.
How are you? I hope all is ok :)

@You "...Once I hit that it's probably time to wrap it up. :)..."

For the next stages please, please :) don't forget one the very main target of the initial discussion about V4: A TRUE "grouping and parenting" for the objects hierarchy.
I don't want to name again the "instancing" because I know that you said that this feature maybe will never come.
But TRUE "grouping and parenting" is a very powerful feature.

Have a nice day :)

Hi Marco, instancing is very much on my radar! I never meant to say it would never come, just that I don't know yet when it will happen. Not for v4 though.

I think that probably hierarchy, grouping, and instancing will need to be all considered together in order to go in a good direction. It will take quite a lot of planning.

Previously I had been thinking that maybe groups would go inside the "Objects" section of the Scene browser along with named objects and that instances would have a separate section. But I've been wondering if it might be better for them to all be intermingled in the same section and that you could filter the view to see just instances for example.

One other kind of hierarchy that will probably be less complex to implement will be to have folders in the Styles section. That will be a lot less complicated so it's likely that will happen first.

- Michael

Thanks Alex!

re:
> Getting a clean dimensioned PDF drawing from MOI will be awesome as it will allow for
> some creative semi technical presentations for client revisions which dont really require
> high detailed manufacturing drawings.

Yup, this is exactly what I'm hoping MoI v4 will be able to do for you.

It should fit in well with the overall "get stuff done quickly" vibe for MoI.

Sounds a lot like this post of mine from 12 (!!!) years ago:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1611.10

;)

- Michael

Damned i was yet in this thread 12 years old :)

Thanks Michael for your reply :)

I'm happy to hear that the "original" targets of V4 are now on your radar again!
Good news!

Please, when you will put your hands on it, please avoid to waste time doing a "middle-ground" solution like the one with "folders in style".

Instead, please go ahead with a TRUE "instancing/parenting/grouping" feature, natively built into the Moi's object system.

Have a nice day.

Thanks for the follow-up Michael !

On press vs release : I see ; indeed, object selection does happen on press and that's great as that is probably *the* one interaction that needs to be super snappy. I am seeing a confirmation on release for edges and faces on my end here, but I understand that the way I work is quite different from the defaults (using edge/face/model selection filters as opposed to going down the hierarchy of components), therefore my perception of these things is likely skewed. I suppose that the instant drag move feature has an impact there too ... but as mentioned before I do not use this feature either because of its behavior not being predictable in perspective mode anyway :D

On that topic : I would say that the need to constantly go to side/front/top views for most manipulations/transformation is probably one of the few things holding Moi back at the moment. I understand that this is hardly a problem when working on an established part to reproduce precisely, but it definitely hinders freestyle modeling during the so called "moments of inspiration" that one can have :) But I suppose that addressing this would be way beyond the scope of v4 anyways.

And again, thank you once more for the option to disable highlighting and flashing. After 2 days of work I can confirm that interaction truly feels a ton better without these. Excellent stuff really.

Oh BTW - this is probably a well known thing but ... the Save and Export buttons are really confusing.

I think it's fair to assume that most users would expect the "Export" action to deal with writing out the scene to another format (like exporting to OBJ or FBX) ; yet the current export button is more of a "Save Selected". So why not simply call it just that ?

Basically having :
Save, Save As, Save Selected (for 3dm files) ; and also Export and Export selected (for all other formats).

Or even more simply :
Save, Save As, and Save selected (3dm + everything else), with no confusing mention of "export".

I hope this makes sense !

Hi pior, thanks for the feedback!

> I am seeing a confirmation on release for edges and faces on my end here, but I
> understand that the way I work is quite different from the defaults (using edge/face/model
> selection filters as opposed to going down the hierarchy of components), therefore
> my perception of these things is likely skewed.

Yes, you're seeing somewhat different behavior than normal because of having selection filters always on.

The filters were a later addition and the main initial concept of them was that they were meant to be used every once in a while to help with a difficult selection situation, not as an always-on primary way of working like you're doing. So they're not quite as finely tuned up.

I think it should be possible to tweak things so that when a filter is active that would prevent the whole object from being dragged that it could do an immediate update on button press like it does for regular full object selection. I'll take a look at setting that up.


> On that topic : I would say that the need to constantly go to side/front/top views for most
> manipulations/transformation is probably one of the few things holding Moi back at the moment.

Well it depends on the particular use case. For other cases working in the ortho views is an essential thing. Basically the single biggest strength of NURBS modeling is that it can produce 3D models very quickly and precisely from 2D curves. Because of this, working with 2D curves is a big focus area for MoI.


> I understand that this is hardly a problem when working on an established part to reproduce
> precisely, <.....>

It doesn't really have much to do with that, in many cases it's just fundamentally easier to control things with 2D profile curves in 2D views.

For some examples take a look at the tutorials in the MoI documentation: http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/tutorials.htm

Those are not making "established parts", they are making objects from scratch but notice all the work with 2D curves done with 2D views there.

I do want to allow for workflows using the 3D view as well, over time I've added quite a bit of functionality in that area and it is something that I want to continue to refine in the future. Working with 2D curves is kind of the top priority though.


> yet the current export button is more of a "Save Selected". So why not simply call it just that ?

It's because it fattens up the button quite a bit:



It's not so great to have one button so much wider than all the other ones, it sort of draws attention to it.

The kind of UI that MoI is targeting with having a combination of both text and icons combined is pretty space constrained and so often there are compromises to keep the text small so the buttons don't get too non-uniform.

I've nearly changed that to "Export selected" several times before, it will probably end up that way eventually if nothing else comes up to improve it.

- Michael

Hi there Michael !

Regarding interaction in the 3d viewport vs in ortho view : I'll write down some more precise thoughts (and proposals !) later as time allows, as that is a rather big topic to unpack. Overall my point is not so much about the way the tools operate, but rather the fact that going to ortho view could be avoided altogether thanks to the addition of a few manipulators/interaction paradigms. Nothing trivial of course, that's a big topic so I'll keep this out of this beta thread. (BTW I don't have an issue with the idea of being able to drag objects on click-drag ; if anything my one issue there is the fact that such dragging doesn't happen in screen space ;) )

Similarly the topic of file menu icons isn't really relevant to the beta of course ... it's just that I was juggling between imports/exports from Moi to other apps quite a bit today and it really started to confuse me hence I thought I'd mention it. But while we are at it : why the need for icons there in the first place anyways ? They honestly do not make the interaction any faster than plain text ...



Also I do believe that a slight misalignment is nowhere near as annoying as being confused by what a button does :) I understand the desire to make the presentation as perfect as possible but I don't think this can justify not using a clear word just because it is a character or two too long :D Anyways, I'll get used to it (or shall I say : time to dive into the css again to make a few edits hehe)

Hi pior,

> but rather the fact that going to ortho view could be avoided altogether thanks
> to the addition of a few manipulators/interaction paradigms.

I'd definitely be interested to see the ideas! But I'm doubtful that any of these things displayed in a 3D perspective view will be able to give the same kind of accuracy that is inherent in the 2D views where there is not any perspective foreshortening happening.

That is not to say that more types of 3D view mechanisms would not be useful in many situations. Just that I don't see that they are likely to be a full replacement for working with 2D curves inside 2D views.


> But while we are at it : why the need for icons there in the first place anyways ?

I guess it's not exactly required but it's a more consistent fit with action buttons in the rest of the UI.


> They honestly do not make the interaction any faster than plain text ...

It's subtle but they actually do, the text being shorter is slightly more difficult to target.

I do like the text you show there too though, more text does help with describing things certainly.

But there is no other area in MoI that has a text button display quite like that. In general a consistent look and feel is helpful. It would be a little weird having just one area that had different controls than was found anywhere else in the UI.

- Michael

Thank you.

I found the 3DConnexion rotation is not intuitive, not matter how I tweak the setting I still not able to get the same rotation control like Rhino and BricsCAD.

I change Rotation Styles to Free rotation, check Allow rotation tilt and Swap Twist and tilt, I wonder why these are not default.

Now Tilt and Twist are ok, but roll is reversed, there is no way to change in MOI setting for reverse roll only.

I also change Rotation speed to 0.25, Pan and Zoom keep 1 as is. Now I can get about the same feel of Rhino, only missing the reverse roll setting, I have to set it in 3Dconnexion control panel.

Hope 3Dconnexion support will be improved in next beta.

-Fred

Hi Fred,

re:
> I wonder why these are not default.

It's because the default is more oriented to behave like the controller is manipulating the camera, while it sounds like you want it to behave more like it is manipulating the object. Those are 2 different styles for how the controls feel and the default happens to not be the one that you prefer.

I'll take a look at it though.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Currently tilt and twist are manipulating the object, but roll is not.

-Fred

Hi Fred, so you need a "reverse roll" setting for doing that, and I wonder if the speed got messed up somehow when adding Mac 3dConnexion support in v4 so I'll investigate that. Anything else in particular that I should be paying attention to?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

"Reverse roll" should be default, then it will be consistent to the default tilt and twist setting.\

Thanks.

-Fred

Hi Fred, the defaults are intended to be set so it behaves similar to the regular mouse navigation. If reverse roll makes it behave strange with the other defaults like "Rotate around world z axis" then it would not be good to have it enabled by default.

But I'll see about adding in a Reverse roll option if that would be useful for you.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Fantastic update with lot of goodies, I (like many others) like new dimension tools so i have questions about that one

Is there way to set TEXT font size for dimension stool (i find ti too small by default) and is there way to show UNITS also ? I'd like to see meters/centimeters or any other user picked unit (in preferences) visible on the dimension line also.

Please check the screengrab

Thanks and sorry if all this has been answered already.

Hi Lewis,

re:
> Is there way to set TEXT font size for dimension stool (i find ti too small by default)

You can set the text size by clicking on the Font value here:



That way (using the properties panel for the selected object's properties) will change just what is selected. To change the defaults for newly created dimensions go to the Options dialog Dimensions section and set the preset's Font value.

> and is there way to show UNITS also ? I'd like to see meters/centimeters or any other user picked unit (in preferences)
> visible on the dimension line also.

You can customize the text content by editing the "Text" value that is just above the Font.

Put in your units label after the <> , so have it like: <>cm for example. The <> will be replaced by the dimension value.

There is not currently a way to set a units label for the default text. At some point in the future I would like to support other types of variables but that won't be ready for v4.

Hope that helps!

- Michael