Wow, what a great addition to MOI - BRAVO, Michael!

I'd love to add this to the Draw Solid menu! Wasn't there a tip around here on how to add command buttons somewhere?


-Will

PS - I noticed if you set an inner radius, and then blank the field (as it is initially), the pipe still retains the last inner radius entered. You have to enter '0' to actually remove the inner radius...

PPS - Would it be possible to add a pick option for a custom profile shape?

Hi Michael,
the script is fantastic, but I have some problem.
It "freeze" moi often (probably is the first time that a crash happen to me).
My computer is not the best out there but usually moi work like a charm.

Ciao
Luca

My laptop has freezing problems with MOI when I have performed heavy boolean and filleting to my models.

I believe this is due to my laptop's video drivers since it doesn't seem to happen to my desktop computer.

Unless your computer is very slow, this could be similar to what's happening with you?

If you can, try a different computer to see if the same happens there too...


-Will

Hi Luca, yes this one behaves a bit differently than a regular command, it does not support the regular kind of canceling mechanism, and while it is busy calculating MoI will appear frozen instead of staying alive like normal.

It should be possible for me to improve this in the future, but for V1 this script will have this problem.

Also you can create a pretty complex calculation with this if you have a lot of curves, or a really long curve, so you probably should only try something complex on this particular one if you have a somewhat faster machine, since it cannot be canceled easily.

- Michael

Hi Will - also this particular command behaves a little differently, it is due to the way it kind of re-uses several other commands internal to it. This particular way of using multiple commands internally does not get the normal smooth cancel mechanism that you usually get.

So this is probably a little different than the problem on your laptop.

I don't think that it will be too difficult to get this fixed up for v2 though.

- Michael

Yes you are right, it's probably my "office" computer (P4 2,8Ghz with only 750MB of RAM).
For the Video card I have a Quadro FX 600, but I cannot update the video driver because it works very well with some programs I use for work (PDMS and stuff like that...).


Regards
Luca

Hi Will,

> I'd love to add this to the Draw Solid menu! Wasn't there a
> tip around here on how to add command buttons somewhere?

What you do is use a text editor like notepad to open up the sidepane.htm file which is in the \ui subfolder underneath MoI's main installation folder.

You'll see in there that each button is a <moi:CommandButton> tag, and you can add a new one in there as well for Pipe if you want.

There is some more information here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1290.4
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1173.1

Let me know if you get stuck. I don't have an icon prepared for that though.



> PS - I noticed if you set an inner radius, and then blank the
> field (as it is initially), the pipe still retains the last inner radius
> entered. You have to enter '0' to actually remove the inner radius...

Let me know if this is a much of a problem - it should be possible to correct this, but it looks like you already know how to solve it! :)


> PPS - Would it be possible to add a pick option for a custom profile shape?

Well, at that point you are not really getting any benefit compared to sweep, except for handling a larger number of curves at once, is that what you need to do?

- Michael

Hi Luca, actually that does not sound like a bad computer (although the amount of RAM is borderline).

The command can be a little sluggish, it is doing quite a bit of work - multiple sweeps plus multiple booleans.

You may have to give it some more time to finish, like a couple of minutes or so. But that is still a lot quicker than all the clicking and clicking that you would normally have to do for this.

Do you see an actual crash, or do you see MoI freeze up while it is working? If it is the freeze then you just aren't waiting long enough :)

I know that feels strange since MoI does not normally behave like that though.

This was a good experiment for me to see what I need to tune up to make this kind of aggregated command function as smoothly as a regular command.

- Michael

Today I try to replicate the "freeze" and maybe to wait a bit more ;-)...I'm so impatience sometime.....
I let you know.

Bye
Luca

Hi Michael,

Finally i see that my original pipe tool request wasn't so bad .... for other users too.
Watching a rail lines frame transforms itself automaticaly in pipes frame is a nice show !!!

Bye,

Pierre.

> PPS - Would it be possible to add a pick option for a custom profile shape?

>>Well, at that point you are not really getting any benefit compared to sweep, except for handling a larger number of curves at once, is that what you need to do?


Well I tried for example drawing a circle for the profile, I offset the circle to make a smaller one (inner diameter) - I selected both circles, executed the sweep command and then selected my squiggly line - only the outer diameter circle was used for the sweep...

The nice thing about this new command is that you can create a single profile, select your curve for it to follow and you get a nice inner diameter parameter for free that allows you to create a shell for your extrusion.

Having the option of picking a custom profile shape would allow me to create say ducting as well as tubing.

Basically Pipe is a hella great function you just added (and just that quick too!) - having the option for a custom profile would be very powerful IMO!

-Will

Maybe a factor of reduction from start to end?

Hi Will,

>>Well I tried for example drawing a circle for the profile, I offset the circle to make a smaller one (inner diameter)
>>- I selected both circles, executed the sweep command and then selected my squiggly line
>>- only the outer diameter circle was used for the sweep...

No, both circles were used for sweeping!



I agree it would be fantastic if MoI was able to handle this kind of sweeping as well. Brian mentioned one viable way - sweeping a planar surface. However I guess it is not impossible to identify this as a special case and do sweeping properly in order we can get a tubular shape:
-both curves are planar
-both curves are lying on the same plane
-one of them is completely inside the other

What do you feel about it, Michael?


edit: And generally, if there was more than two rails selected, MoI would sweep a profile(s) along each rail individually. It would allow "handling a larger number of curves at once" :)


Petr

Hi, Tyglik, I guess I didn't notice the change in diameter - I was expect more of what Pipe does however as you (and Brian) mentioned, having the inner diameter form the "thickness" of the wall of the pipe (or in my wish) duct...

Being able to have Pipe with a custom profile and a scaling curve would be the ultimate - I'd stay at home for the day to celebrate! :-p

-Will

Michael,

You are terrific! thanks this is fantastic, I am amazed with your support and generosity of spirit. It is inspiring I know it is a business, however the human compassionate component you bring to this forum is awesome. I am happy to have discovered Moi. I bought it within the first week of release with no regrets :)

Fan for life.

Great work Michael on that script :) i haven't tried it yet but i will. Perhaps you should code into Moi's core directly, and then toss in a couple of extra things in it.

/ Magnus

Hi Will,

> select your curve for it to follow and you get a nice inner diameter
> parameter for free that allows you to create a shell for your extrusion.

The tricky part is that not every curve has a diameter value associated with it.

For example, what would you say is "diameter" of this curve:




> Well I tried for example drawing a circle for the profile, I offset the
> circle to make a smaller one (inner diameter) - I selected both
> circles, executed the sweep command and then selected my
> squiggly line - only the outer diameter circle was used for the sweep...

To get this kind of a thing with sweep, you would actually do 2 different steps - first sweep with just the outer circle and turn the "Cap ends" option off so that it has open ends. Then select your open tube and run Construct / Shell to thicken it.

For example:

Sweep:



Then Shell:




The "radius" based UI of Pipe does not really coordinate well with a custom outline since a custom outline needs a thickness and possibly a directional flip option and not any of the inner/outer radius values that Pipe uses. It basically needs a completely separate UI for it.

But it is still possible to create such things, just not with this new Pipe command though - Pipe's UI is focused on circular pipes.

- Michael

Hi Michael, well to answer your first question the diameter would have to be small enough to fit though the section where the curves are the closest - I get your point but I certainly wouldn't be making piping and ducting with a shape like that...


Thanks for the refresher on sweep, yes, sweep and shell together does do what I requested for Pipe, not to mention a scaling curve with sweep would give even more shape variety over Pipe by itself...

My goal is to create some nurnies for fusionThing w/Cinema 4D...
( http://www.lotsofpixels.com/fusionThing/#detai )

It's just you whip'd Pipe together so fast, I was hoping it was easy to also add an option for an arbitrarily shaped profile curve...

-Will

Okay, but I see that shell doesn't handle sweeps with varying thickness?

-Will

Hi Will,

> Okay, but I see that shell doesn't handle sweeps with varying thickness?

It should if the conditions allow it - here's an example:




But if you ask for a shell thickness where there is not room to allow that much thickness without the offset folding over top of itself, then you will run into problems... I think that's what you've got happening there, you probably need to use a smaller thickness to get a clean offset.

Here is an illustration of the problem:



The above was taken from the documetation on Fillet - trying to perform a fillet of too large a radius around a sharp corner is basically the same problem as asking for too large of a shell thickness where the size or curvature of the surface does not allow for that size.

If you want to post your .3dm model file, I can examine it to verify that this is the problem or not.

If you try a smaller thickness you'll probably see it work ok though.

- Michael