Hi billis, definitely doing that kind of warping is easier to do in Rhino, there is a command in Rhino v4 called "FlowAlongSrf" which can morph curves from a source surface (which would be a plane that you would draw underneath your curves) to a target surface.
If you have Rhino then I would suggest using that command to accomplish that.
to do this in MoI alone probably the easiest way would be to create a flat plane object with several points in it, then trim that plane and then move the control points of the plane to change it to a curved shape, the trimmed holes will follow along with it.
Here are some steps for that method:
Starting wiht a curve drawn with Draw curve / Freeform / Control points, make a curve that has several points along a straight line like this:
Now extrude this curve (possibly using the Set Dir command to tell MoI which direction to extrude in) to create a surface that has the same kind of point structure:
So now you've got a plane there, but unlike a simple plane that has just 4 corner points, this one has several interior control points which can be used to deform it later on.
Now take your flat curve patterns, and use Edit/Trim to cut holes in this plane with them, like this:
Now select the plane, turn control points on with Edit/Show pts, and then from the front view, drag the points around to warp the plane into your curved shape. Do a window select around each point so that you actually grab the pair of points in each spot instead of doing a single click which will only select one of them:
The holes on the plane will move along when the surface's control points are dragged, so you can get a final result like this:
If you have Rhino available though I would suggest using FlowAlongSrf instead of this though.
Hope this helps!
- Michael