Nice one, thank you Michael,


- Steve

Hi Michael,

>>"each view has its own 2D drawing plane" type system.

This is only true for picking point. But, for example, when you want to make a point which is five units from local plane X-axis and two units from Y-axis in Front viewport using keyboard, you have to type:

5,0,2

and not 5,2 like in Rhino. I know, this is due to lacking of concept of active viewport in MoI...

Petr

ps: Wow! Two subscriptions for upFront.eZine. MoI seems to be selling well... ;)

Hi Petr,

> and not 5,2 like in Rhino. I know, this is due to lacking of
> concept of active viewport in MoI...

Yes, but this is actually a feature of MoI - the way Rhino works means that typing 5,2 gives different results depending on where your mouse pointer happens to be hovering over.

This can be a big problem, because if you just happened to move your mouse pointer a little bit to coast over a different viewport, or move over one while traveling to a button or something, it changes what your typed in values mean.

It is just way too "fragile" - it is one of the problem areas of my prior design in Rhino that I have corrected with MoI.

If you need to enter a lot of 2D coordinates into the front view, then for the next v2 beta you can switch the global construction plane to be aligned with the front view - once you have set a global construction plane (there is an option to apply it to all views or just the 3D view) then when you type in coordinates it will use that cplane coordinate system. The only thing that may take some getting used to is that the Front view also changes in that case to become a front view relative to the edge of that new cplane instead of the world front view.... Maybe I should have an alternate cplane mode that doesn't change the view or something, I'm not sure - I still have a bit of work left to finish up the cplane stuff.


> ps: Wow! Two subscriptions for upFront.eZine. MoI
> seems to be selling well... ;)

He normally asks for only $25 for a subscription, I thought I would help support him with a little extra, since I like his newsletter. :) It's not very extravagant...

- Michael

>>when you type in coordinates it will use that cplane coordinate system.

So from now, there will be a difference between typing w5,5,5 and 5,5,5 as soon as I change a position of global construction plane.

>>I like his newsletter

So do I.


Petr

Hi Petr,

> So from now, there will be a difference between typing
> w5,5,5 and 5,5,5 as soon as I change a position of global
> construction plane.

Yup, that's correct - if you have set a global construction plane, you can type that "w" prefix to specify a world coordinate point.

The nice thing about this system is that your entered points will never change if you happened to move your mouse over top of another viewport, once you set a construction plane all your coordinates will be entered using that plane's coordinate system unless you use "w". If you don't set a construction plane then all your entered points use world coordinates. It's just a lot less fragile system.


For switching the views around, what I think I will do is if you set a global cplane and it is aligned with one of the world axes, then in that case I won't change the Top/Front/Right views for that particular case.

Normally the Top, Front, and Right views will reposition themselves when you set a global cplane so that they are looking down at plan views relative to that new cplane. When they are in this mode, they display as "Top (cplane)", "Front (cplane)", and "Right (cplane)" in their upper left corner for their names.

Also when you set an global cplane the x,y,z point feedback will be in that coordinate system, and there is a "c" in front of it to denote that it is cplane-relative coordinates and not world coordinates.

- Michael