Look I have designed a few things in MoI and its ok for the designs I have done to this point.
But
Now I need to export them to other programs like maya so I can turn them into blue print style images.

I do these designs as a hobby but MoI does not seem to work like that.

I get frustrated that I just designed something that I can not print or export to any program.

Is there a way of exporting my designs?
or
Printing them in 2D images (front view,back view,left side view,right side view,top and bottom.)

any help is great

Just some thoughts.
You can do a Print Screen of what you have on the MoI UI and print that out,
MoI lists a variety of export formats acceptable to virtually all other apps. Especially .obj type files.
If you want to convert your MoI information into a conventional plan type drawing, with measurements etc, you can look at apps like Rhino, Amapi, ViaCAD etc.
(When you get involved with those apps you will apprecite how good MoI is in relation to it's modelling intent.)
Does this meet the intent of your questions?

Hi Alpha, yes that's correct that MoI does not generate rendered images right now, you do need to export to a different program to do that.

To export your data, you just need to do a "Save As" and pick a file format that Maya supports. You can see the different choices listed in the dropdown at the bottom of the Save As file name dialog, it is under the thing listed "Save as type:".

I think there are several different formats that should work - I would recommend trying OBJ format.

It should also be possible to transfer the smooth surface patches directly by using IGES format, you could give that a try if you have difficulties with OBJ format.

If you just want to get a very basic image of the screen and print that, you can do that by pressing the "Print screen" key on your keyboard which will take a snapshot of the screen and put it as a bitmap on the clipboard. Then you can go to an image processing program (windows paintbrush will do if you don't have any other), and paste in there and then print. That's another option.

- Michael


[ edit: I see Brian beat me to the reply! :) ]

(Some people (like this himself) just have not got the energy to do something original in this all time record heat wave here in South Australia, maybe 40C here again today after some 15 similar days.
But, hey!, winter is arriving, for a day, on Thursday when it will be a freezing 24C!--it's the 17th day of Autumn so they say?)

Hi Michael,
I've noticed that MoI imports IGES but makes strange groping/merging on parts.
I make an assembly in Alibre, export STP214, convert in IGES thru iges2step and then import in MoI.
After that I use the MoI .obj export for KT or Carrara.
The import is correct but some parts are glued together and do not respect the original part assy.
I verified the IGES file with Polytrans and the file is Ok.




The selected parts are merged.
Ungroup command does not work properly (in this case) because it separates all the surfaces.
All the parts are mated/aligned in Alibre with zero tolerance.

The MoI file is too big to upload.

Any idea? I like the MoI Exports and I wish to use it to adds details and 'prepare' the scene and the Alibre parts/assy for rendering.

Gianrico

Hi Gianrico,

I guess, it's rather an issue of translating a file by iges2step converter. It apparently writes a solids as a separate surfaces into the IGES file. Then, when you import the IGES file, those individual surfaces are automatically joined into a solid (note, that this MoI's feature can be turned off in moi.ini under the section [IGES] JoinOnImport=n ). However, Moi seems not to be able to properly join all surfaces together into the solid. Maybe the trouble is, there is no clear what part should be joined due to the overlapping edges of surfaces(?).

Petr

Hi Petr,
thank you for the answer!

The IGES file from iges2step, tested in Okino Polytrans, seems to be ok.
If I turn off JoinOnImport obviously the surfaces are all separated and I need to 'clean' all the surfaces not involved in rendering.
The strange thing is that the 'glued' parts have no relationships or contact between them.
It is possible to correctly select all the different parts in Moi but the resulting mesh is a join of the parts indicated in the jpg shown.

Gianrico

Hi Gianrico, is it possible for you to send the .igs file to me through e-mail (moi@moi3d.com) ? That would make it a lot easier for me to understand what is going on. I can understand if you are not able to send it, but if you do I will keep any file you send to be confidential.

Otherwise it is pretty hard for me to guess what is happening... But like Petr mentioned it sounds like something is not going completely well with the joining process.

Looking at your screenshot, it is possible that model scale is an issue. MoI generally uses a tolerance of 0.001 units. If your objects are very large (so that 0.001 is too small), or very small (so that 0.001 is a large number in comparison to your object), then things based on tolerance may not behave very well, and joining is one of the operations that depends on tolerance.

One quick note on Edit/Separate - if you want to, you can select a set of surfaces from an object instead of selecting the whole object, and then when you run Edit/Separate, just that piece will break off into its own separate object instead of everything going to individual surfaces.

- Michael

Hi Gianrico, looking more closely at your screenshot, it looks like the grid is fairly dense there, that may mean that your model is rather large in numeric size? I mean is it something like 100,000 units in size or something like that?

If so, then you might try scaling it down so that it is somewhere more in the range of 10 to 100 units in size (doesn't matter what units are set, just the actual numeric value) in Alibre and see if that works better.

- Michael

Hi Michael,
I've sent the files to you. I think may be interesting to investigate.
The dimensions of the assy is not so big: less than 400 units.

Notice (in the imported iges) that when you select the long cylinder the 'ghost glued' parts will flash for a moment.
Delete the long cylinder and then undo. Now select again the cyl and the 'ghost glue' become clearly visible.
This is not the only assy with this kind of problems. I will try other experiments and ther report them to forum.
For now I am using the trial version.

Thanks for the support, this forum it is a great 'feature' of MoI!

Gianrico

New tests.






In this image the ring on the back is fully decoupled (in Alibre) from the assy but mantain the union with the other parts.
This happen ONLY if i click on the ring; the other parts selection is correct.









This is the strange thing when i click on cyl to select it. In this case the cyl drives the selection. NOT the other parts.




I deleted the ring, then undo and move: the other parts are magically duplicated!

Gianrico

Hi Gianrico, there are several touching parts all included inside of this one file.

Right now MoI will get confused by this type of structure, it isn't able to understand how to join these pieces together properly.

So for instance in the collar here:



If you slide that over, you can see it has an exactly overlapping part on the other piece:





Above you can see that there are some edges from each part that overlap on top of each other. MoI is getting confused and making attempts to join edges like that, it does not understand how these surfaces are supposed to be separated into individual parts at this point.

It looks like there is some kind of simple grouping information in the IGES file (IGES entity 402). I guess that is supposed to give a kind of unordered listing of surfaces that are supposed to belong to each part? Right now MoI does not look at that entity 402 group information so it doesn't know to only try to join together surfaces within the same group. Probably PolyTrans is looking at that information and that's how it knows not to just try and join everything.

It looks like I may be able to fix this up in the future.

In the meantime, there are a few different choices for how to proceed.

#1 - it is possible to have solids inside of an IGES file - these are called IGES entity 186. If it is possible for you to generate the IGES file using this type of object, then MoI will be able to identify individual parts properly and things should come in joined correctly.

#2 - turn off auto-joining in the moi.ini file, and then select sets of surfaces that you know belong together and join them manually.

#3 - break this into several files exported from the source program, so that each file only has one part inside of it instead of the whole assembly in one file.


Right now you'll have to use one of those methods, please let me know if none of them works for you.

- Michael

Hi Michael,
thank you for your time!
If you read my last post you'll find that the coincident edges is not always the problem.
I can understand the connection between coincident parts but it is not my case. The body of the object it is in three parts but it is comprehensible their union. Other object do no have coincidence thru them!
I'll try to manipulate the IGES file to find some 'trick'.

Gianrico

Hi Gianrico, once the joiner tries to merge edges that connect to more than 2 surfaces, the results can be pretty unpredictable.

There is a process at the end of joining that tries to separate out different volumes and break "non-manifold" pieces back into more normal pieces, but in this case something appears to be going wrong with that final processing.

There seems to be some kind of bug in that final processing in this case, and that is why you end up with that strange disconnected piece.

But it's not really a great case for me to focus on fixing, since the joiner just does not have a chance to process this situation properly anyway, due to the coincident edges. If you use one of the 3 methods above, it should give the joiner a chance to work.

It just doesn't have a chance to work right when you have any coincident edges in there...

Maybe I have not understood your message ... ?

- Michael

Ok Michael, away from me the idea to ask fixing something for me!
Otherwise I must to buy at least ten licenses of MoI! :-D

I will continue to investigate on it (inside my possibilities) just for learn something more.
If some idea comes out I will inform the forum.

Thanks again
Gianrico

I have looked at the different file format but none seem to be for Maya.

these are the programs I use

*Maya 8.5 Personal learning version
*Wings 3D
*Autocad 2008
*MoI.

I use to have MoI Beta but had to update :(

I really do not want to loose my designs as I enjoyed making them.
also I want to make them look cool by texturing them along with doing the plans view of them.

Hi Alphapack - I believe the Maya Personal Learning Edition does not have the full set of file support that the regular Maya version has.

One thing that should work is export from MoI to .3ds format, then use the 3dsin command in AutoCAD.

Does that do the job for you?

Another possibility is to export from MoI to .obj format, using the "Output: Quads & Triangles" option, then use a converter program like 3DWin to convert it into DXF format, which is supported by AutoCAD as well. 3DWin supports a lot of formats so with this method I would think you should be able to find something in common with your other programs.

- Michael

Hi Gianrico,

> Ok Michael, away from me the idea to ask fixing something for me!

Well, the true fix in this case would be for MoI's IGES reader to look at the group elements in the IGES file and only attempt to join surfaces from the same group.

I would like to fix this in the future, I have added it to my list of stuff to work on.


The other part that you are asking about, the disconnected object, is related to difficulties in processing the big pile of surfaces with coincident edges. Even if the area is not immediately in the same spot as the coincident edges, it is caused by side effects from those in other places of the model.


Are you able to use one of the methods above to get this model finished up properly?

Let me know you if you need any help finishing this, I could do one of those steps for you and send you the completed model if you are having difficulty finishing this up, just let me know.

- Michael

Don't worry, Michael, I have no problem with this model.
It is only a test to understand what's happen.
I have other models with the same problem with completely different structure but for now I use a little trick:

1 - I look for the part that 'drive' the group
2 - Cycle thru select until it is the only selection (two or three clicks, strange but real)
3 - Click on 'separate' command'. Now the group is ungrouped but all the parts in the group (except the driver) are duplicate.
4 - Delete the duplicate parts.

Unlimited thanks
Gianrico

Hi Gianrico, I'm glad you have a solution!

I you have other sample files that have this same kind of behavior, can you please e-mail me those if possible? (moi@moi3d.com)

That way I will have more samples to test with when I get a chance to work on improving the IGES import.

- Michael