All right, some more progress for on-surface drawing.

Now if you draw a planar object (like rectangle, circle, polygon) in the 3D view and you snap 2 points on to a common plane, it will draw the object on that plane.

So this allows for stuff like this for example:


That's just moving the mouse over different faces to draw on different planes.

There are quite a few changes to help enable this kind of direct surface drawing, still working on a few more related things though.

- Michael

I suppose that the snapping is also valuable if there is another object on the surface?

This will can be also exist when drawing on a sphere or any volume? (hoops it's on first post)

Neeeeeeeeed !!! :)

-Cool

Looking good Michael,

During a building the other day, I was thinking about an option for "project to cplane" or a possible restriction for construction, such as omit x/y/z, it could certainly help, what do you think?


- manz

Hi Steve,

> During a building the other day, I was thinking about an option for
> "project to cplane" or a possible restriction for construction, such
> as omit x/y/z, it could certainly help, what do you think?

That does happen automatically if you're picking in an ortho view, and you have Options / Snaps / Object snap options / Project to plane in ortho views enabled (on by default). It actually projects to a plane parallel to the cplane but going through the first point that you picked.

So the idea for that was to use those ortho views if you wanted to ensure planarity in the thing that you were drawing, but allow more free placement in 3D if you're picking in the 3D view.

But yeah with some new features for drawing on planes in the 3D view it could be nice to have planarity optionally more ensured in there too - while drawing a curve on a face it is pretty easy right now to snap one point of a curve for example to a point on the other side of the box and make a zig-zaggy curve instead of a planar one on a face.

But if I can make object snaps ignore hidden snap points better, that may solve that problem pretty well, so I'm going to take a look at doing that first.

re:
> such as omit x/y/z,

I'm not sure if I follow you on this one - could you describe this part a bit more?

- Michael

The next part is surface normal snap - this is a straight snap similar to tangent/perpendicular snap:



Still a little bit of work to finish this one up, I think for spots where multiple surfaces are involved, like a corner where several faces meet, I will only take the surface normal if only one of those faces is selected. Otherwise I think there will be too many tracking lines to deal with.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>> such as omit x/y/z,

>>I'm not sure if I follow you on this one - could you describe this part a bit more?

Sorry, bad description.
It is really just a thought of being able to force an ortho snap in the 3d view, basically as you descibe for the 2d view ortho snaps, so for example, have an option to constrain to a specific axis based on the first pick point, so if I select (or de-select) Z, then all curves would be drawn on the xy plain based on the initial Z in the 3d view. I do suppose anything like that can be seen more as a user cplane.


- manz

Hi Steve, I understand now - yeah I think an actual user cplane may be the way to get this kind of thing working in the 3D view. I think I am going to also take a look at that to see what I can do there during this pass of snapping and drawing related work.

- Michael

Hi Steve, a while ago you wrote:

> As with current snaps for "On" the side/edge of a cube in a 2d view,
> sometimes the snap will be on the front line/edge, sometimes on
> the back.

After much wrangling, I think I have got this fixed now for v2.

In v2, the top-most non-hidden-line edge or curve should now get targeted when there are multiple things stacked right on top of each other, like when you are looking at a cube in the 2D views. This effects both selection as well as "on" object snap.

Similarly if you have a stacked up bunch of specific point-targeted osnaps like End object snaps stacked right on top of each other from a 2d view, the topmost one of those will be taken.

I've also combined the 2 settings for "Display hidden-line curves" and "Display hidden-line edges" into just one "Display hidden lines" setting, and also made it available on the View palette in the side pane. I'll probably be trying to put various view-related settings that you may want to change while modeling inside of that area.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

>>After much wrangling, I think I have got this fixed now for v2.

I think it is worth the wrangling on this.
I do wonder how many new (trial) users have had problems with construction due to the snapping (and not realized what has happened), then simply uninstalled MoI.

Regards,

- manz

Hi Steve, in simple situations that kind of "stacked up" snap going to some elevation other than the top doesn't really tend to cause a catastrophic error, because if you continue drawing in the 2d view all the other points are still going to be planar to that view. If you need to use the resulting curve to do a Boolean for example it doesn't really matter what elevation the thing you just drew was on, and if the elevation was important, when you switch to the 3D view it is usually pretty easy to see that it is at a different elevation and can be moved into place.

So I think it is unlikely that this particular thing was a cause of very many trial version frustrations.

But I still think it is worthwhile though - it is just probably something that will help more advanced users and somewhat more complex projects.

- Michael

Hi Michael, I was not thinking of a polyline or freeform continuous curve etc, I was thinking more where 2 or 3 lines/curves are drawn based on snap points and how easy it is to snap to a far point rather than the end of the line/curve aimed for, which can then leave a constructed set of curves open when thought closed (even if all lines are planer), so then such as extrude will not cap (as simple example)


- manz

Hi Steve, the new "target top thing" will not really always guarantee that won't still happen.

Like for instance if you get an initial line that is at half the elevation of a box, and then switch to the top view and draw another line, you'll get the top of the box, and if you were wanting to have that connected with the other mid-elevation line you will end up with the situation that you describe.

To really avoid that can still require doing the first pick in the 3D view where you can more clearly differentiate between the different points and target the specific one you need.

But the new tune-up will make for a more consistent behavior, and that should help more experienced users be able to use stacked up points in the 2D views with better results when they know that the top-level elevation is what they want to hit.

- Michael

Hi Steve, some other great news for v2 point picking / snapping stuff.

I have been able to make the improvements to snapping to not snap on to hidden points (like end / mid points) when the hidden line display is turned off.

You had mentioned this previously back here.


Here's an example - here is a model that has a bunch of hidden edges in the current viewpoint:




In v1 you can turn off the hidden edge display under Options / View / Display hidden-line edges, but all the endpoints and midpoints of those hidden edges would still remain snappable in drawing commands, like this:




With the new osnap visibility determination in v2, you will get these snap targets instead:




The visibility determination gets applied automatically when you turn off the hidden-line display.

There is also a new checkbox for toggling hidden line display under the View palette on the side pane so you can switch it on or off without needing to go to the Options dialog.


I think this is going to go together nicely with the new on-surface drawing stuff, it will help prevent excessive snapping on to the back side of the object and stuff like that.


The new treatment applies to End, Mid, Cen, and Quad snaps - previously in v1 Perp, Tan, Int, and On type snaps would actually be suppressed on non-displayed edges already.


A quick survey of a couple of CAD apps seems to indicate that this might be a pretty unique ability for MoI - doing a quick test of SketchUp, Rhino, and ViaCAD it appeared that none of those do this kind of visibility determination on things like end/mid snaps.


- Michael

When!!!!!!!

hehe put a copyright on it ;)

Nice touch Michael !

jonah

Hi Michael,

>>some other great news for v2 point picking / snapping stuff.

Looking very good, it will certainly help the workflow greatly.


Regards,

- manz

Hi Brian,

> When!!!!!!!

It's getting there... :) Just a couple other tweaks and bug fixes for some snapping stuff, then I'll do the geometry library update, then it will be ready.

- Michael