Hi Group,

Maybe it's me because nobody seems to have mentioned this ??

num x 3
num y 1 ?
num z 1 ?

By default MoI gives X and Y boxes - should it not just provide X ?

When I click on external geometry (drawing out of the way - centre-centre snaps) to recall dimension nothing happens. The pitch
happens to be 55mm, if I click bot have the X 55 and the Y some obscure value it works as expected, any number in Y does the trick.

What am i doing wrong pls ?

Hi Paul,

> By default MoI gives X and Y boxes - should it not just provide X ?

I guess so.... But basically the y spacing just doesn't do anything in that case, you can enter anything there and it won't make any difference.

Normally if you want to do only a one-directional array, I'd recommend using the Array "Dir" variant for that purpose instead - it is focused on that type of replication.

To do that, select your object, run Transform / Array / Dir, set Item count to 3, click the base point anywhere, click on the "d" box in the bottom toolbar and enter 55 <OK> to activate distance constraint, then click the second point snapped in the x direction.

The nice thing about that method is it allows the replication to be oriented in any direction you choose, not just x/y/z, although just using straight snap for the second point allows you to get x/y/z if you want.

The Array "Grid" variant is more focused on creating an array based on a 2D rectangle or 3D box instead of a line.

- Michael

Yes - Thx!!

Hi Paul, I've also now fixed up v2's array grid to work like you were originally expecting - now if you set 1 item in either the x or y directions, it will only have an input box for x spacing or y spacing instead of both (however, drawing the spacing with a mouse will still use a rectangle).

- Michael

This may already be on the wish list, but can we have the array distribute (or divide) over the selected distance, as well as increment (multiply) which is what it currently does?

...Just noticed this post. Thank's Michael !!

If we could have a preview tick box and a BACK button below the 'axis spacing this would make it more flexible
as a command with the ability to see and change without leaving the cmd......just a thought ;-)

>> From: buzz (BRUCE) 9 Jun 10:59 (5 of 6)
>> This may already be on the wish list, but can we have the array distribute (or divide) over the selected distance, as well as increment (multiply) which is what it currently does?

I second this!

Hi Bruce, yup I already have that one on my todo list, to make an option for array grid and array dir to define the full extent instead of the incremental extent.

- Michael

Hi Paul,

> If we could have a preview tick box and a BACK button below
> the 'axis spacing this would make it more flexible
> as a command with the ability to see and change without
> leaving the cmd......just a thought ;-)

Hmm, unfortunately these ones are a bit difficult to add without making array stick out and behave differently than other commands.

I've generally tried to avoid having a special "preview" button in MoI - instead it just automatically does previews when it can. Array grid tends to be a potentially rather "heavy" case though since it can create quite a large number of objects... So to keep it running smoothly in all cases it does not currently do a preview. Maybe in the future I could do something like detect when it is going to make less than 30 objects or so and go ahead and do it dynamically then.

re: Back button - that is also a good idea, but it is something that I would probably want to go in and add into every command, not just one single one. But of course that is a lot of work so it might take quite a while before I can gather up time to do that.

- Michael

Once you have a wireframe display mode, you could use that for array preview. Or maybe just use bounding boxes to represent the clones...

jonah