Hello Michael, all,

I often find myself wondering how I could possibly edit a part in MOI (adjusting/dimensionning features after the fact) without rebuilding it fully.

(If I am not mistaken there has always been frequent user requests for full history-based modeling support, but while there are obvious advantages to history-based CAD I still believe that when it comes to raw modeling speed, MOI is still king. As a matter of fact I am often shocked by how incredibly slow constraints-based modeling can be compared to the blazing speed of operations in MOI ...)

So going back to the original point : as said the one thing I miss in MOI is the ability to edit a part after the fact (beyond merely performing more extrusions/booleans on it, or deleting/rebuilding features manually) . This leads me to the following observations :

- Performing a Separate operation on a solid results in all its individual NURBS components with their control points as originally drafted or as originally generated by the various modeling operations (hence with unintuitive control points sitting far outside of the actual surfaces) - labelled as "separated" on the screenshot below.

- However, selecting all the inneer curve components of a solid and making a copy of them results in a wireframe analog perfectly matching the solid in terms of local features, and with very intuitive control points - labelled as "copied curves".



These copied curves are very interesting to me because they essentially allow for editing similarly to how one would edit ortho sketches, with perfect control on the editable points (unlike "push/pull" in Fusion360 getting unpredictably confused by chamfers for instance).

https://youtu.be/OJU-eqRgJ9A

Being able to edit a solid in this manner would be very straightforward and powerful. But even though this isn't currently possible, perhaps there are some clever workarounds I am not aware of ? I actually don't mind resurfacing a part from curves after the fact as it is just a matter of performing a few lofts/fills/revolves if the part is simple enough ... but perhaps there is a way to process the surfaces of a solid, separating everything and trimming the resulting surfaces down the bounds of their bounding curves for instance ? I am basically interested in anything that could possibly make this solid editing approach more viable.

(I also understand that the Node Editor might sound like a good alternative, but I am looking for something more direct and intuitive.)

I should also probably mention that at the end of the day I am completely OK with the current paradigm consisting of rebuilding a part, as it is so fast to do anyways. But direct editing would certainly make things *even faster* :)

I hope this makes sense !

You propose an interesting concept, pior.

I typically keep all my rough shapes and curves in "intermediate step" colours so I don't have to reconstruct much. I make sure to keep a copy of all objects before I do any boolean operations. And then I keep a copy of the final shapes before filleting. I use about 5 - 8 colours when modelling, just keeping previous steps always accessible. I imagine a system, like what you propose, would have to do all that behind the scenes and keep a history of every modification... file size be damned! ;-)

I don't have access to MoI at the moment, but everything in your example could possibly be done with commands that already use the history feature. If you kept all the lines that describe your parts as separated segments and run planars (with holes) and lofts between them, you could essentially have a live, flexible version of your part. However, it would remain as separate surfaces until you're happy with the dimensions and then you'd just copy and paste the surfaces, and join them to essentially "spawn a solid". You could probably make a script to take all selected surfaces, copy them and make that copy into a solid with a single key stroke.

There's quite a few commands that use the history feature, in fact.

I wonder if there is a way to restrict object selection to a "points only" mode, to make manipulating the segment points easier. Maybe someone can chime in on that?

I know you're mostly proposing a thought exercise, pior, but it has merit.

Anyway, food for thought.

Hello !

Indeed that's very much a brainstorm/proof of concept ... but I think I'll keep a mental note of it still, as it could come in handy for some parts.
Overall I do feel like MOI is getting closer and closer closer to allowing for such fluid editing across the board.

If anything I feel like at this time, I might be able to get the most out of the proposed concept/paradigm by simply building my parts fully as a wireframe first, and only surfacing/stitching at the end (as opposed to using volumes early on). Fun stuff ...