Sometimes when doing illustrations from Moi I find it easier to select some parts and hide it before make2d.

Would it be possible to select edges based on proximity?

This is how an original model can look


And this is what kind of edges I'm trying to hide before make2d( just cleaned up some of the lines in the middle)


I have tested tangentStyler and filtering edges in Types palette but It's still a lot of manual work.

This would be a way to avoid to much cleaning up in illustrator.

Is it possible?

Hi Juno,

It looks like you're trying to illustrate the part as if some of the fillets were removed. In other words, simplify fillets as sharp corners. Is that right?

What is the proximity rule you're hoping to use? Proximity of what to what?

- Peer

What I’m trying to avoid is lines so close to each other they look like a thick line.
Sometimes it’s better to do some cleaning up in Moi before exporting as eps.

Hi Juniper,

Automating that in MoI would be pretty difficult. Have you tried the Illustrator plugins from Rick Johnson?

https://rj-graffix.com/product/cutting-tools-plugin/

- Peer

Hi Juniper,

re:
> "This is how an original model can look:"
<....>
> And this is what kind of edges I'm trying to hide before
> make2d( just cleaned up some of the lines in the middle)

I'm sorry I'm not really understanding the difference between these examples.

Could you maybe point out what is different in a little more detail?

- Michael

Discovered Rick's plugins last year and bought them all, they are awsome!!

When exporting from Moi to 2d image a lot of lines needs to be cleaned up in illustrator, and sometimes it's easier to select lines and hide them in Moi before exporting.
Especially around fillets I clean up a lot of lines.

Here's the part I cleaned up a little, by hiding some fillet edges .


I know Moi is a small program but for me it has been a goldmine discovering all the scripts and extra functions . I originaly bought Moi for the mesh export, then found the make2d.

It's so much faster than using industri standard programs like Solidworks Composer for 2d illustrations.

Hi Juniper, one thing you can do to select a bunch of edges in one area is to select one edge there to start with and then do a window selection starting the window on the right and dragging it from right to left.

That will do a "crossing" window selection (with dashed drag rect) that will select any curves that touch the window.

If you do a window selection starting on the left and dragging from left to right that will only select edges that are totally inside the window.

Looks like this:



- Michael

Thanks Michael, thats actually a better way to select.

I´ve always used the filter on edges( in the types palette) but dragging the selection then went through the model and selected all edges in the model, even on the back side so I had to select every edge one by one.

Thanks for tips about rj-graffix pressure (PEER).

Just discovered a new thing in illustrator the other day( maybe it´s been there for years).

When holding down the delete key you can drag selections that gets deleted right away, and it works with both regular selection tool aswell as lasso tool.

I´ve been selecting stuff and pressing delete for every single object or line for over 20 years :-)

Hi Juniper,

Thanks for the tip about holding down the delete key. I didn't know that.

- Peer

Hi Juniper, a couple of other things that may be useful:

If you make a mistake in selecting, unselecting, or hiding something you can use undo to revert it. Only the most recent action is held in undo for this so do the undo for this before doing any other selection.

Another thing is if you have a pretty complex set of edges you want to hide instead of only hiding them you can assign them a name so you can hide or show them again as a set using the Scene Browser.

So for example here's a script you can set on a shortcut key that will hide the current selection but also set the object names to "Hide edges" so you can manipulate them in the scene browser:

script: /* Hide and assign to name "Hide edges" */ var objs = moi.geometryDatabase.getSelectedObjects(); if ( objs.length > 0 ) { objs.setProperty( 'name', 'Hide edges' ); moi.geometryDatabase.hide(); }

Another thing is if you want to show just one or some of the currently hidden edges instead of all of them, you can do a Ctrl+click on the Edit > Hide button in the side pane to do a "Show subset". That will temporarily show all hidden objects and let you select one or more of them and then when you finish just those selected ones will remain shown.

- Michael

Hi Michael, and thanks, I didn´t know about the "Show subset", it makes it a bit easier to see whats hidden.

Sometimes i just hide the edges or put them in a style and then hide the style.

"Show subset" feels lika a faster and easier way to work, thank you!

Is there any way I could just select the edges thats visible by dragging in the window and not the edges not visible(backside or see through).

Hi Juniper,

re:
> Is there any way I could just select the edges thats visible by dragging in the window and not the
> edges not visible(backside or see through).

Sorry no there isn't a way to do that with window select.

- Michael

No worries, thanks for answering