Nice, exstensive and thorough review.

Thanks for the link Michael. It actually educated me about poly modeling which I've never played with before, I don't think?

Cheers

Good news, the word must spread!

We need more intuitive and effective user interface like this.

Marc

Well, I agree with the "What's Not So Good"

>># No wire frame view mode
>># No layers, object naming
>># History needs to be more consistent

Those can be added by Micheal, but,

>># Fillet and blend operations need improvement

That is reliant on the geometry library, which gives me concern, really as whatever reports are made and any bugs shown, it will be down to 3rd party for any fix, which would make it possible for a full release of MoI version2 with known bugs (even bugs/problems shown in V1)

>>Inadequate feedback about operational failures

Not sure was is being referred to there?


- manz

Great review for a great app!

* No wire frame view mode
* No layers, object naming
* Fillet and blend operations need improvement
* History needs to be more consistent
* Inadequate feedback about operational failures


The above comments are our wishes... I hope none of them exists after V2.0!

A nice thorough article,
David Diamond, the author, has some good points about Moi,
Like "simple, clear and to the point", and giving creds to Michael for making such a stable and well-interfaced v1.

But I don,t agree with this "No one expects you to sail in a boat you've designed in MoI".
Why not?
It's certainly possible to design a perfectly precice and good sailboat hull in Moi.
Im at least sure i will use Moi in my next kayak project. Can't think of any reason not to.

Personally I don't miss layers or wireframe or object naming.

-Fredrik

Hi Fredrik,

re: "No one expects you to sail in a boat you've designed in MoI".

My guess is that David was just kind of trying to give a feel for the different primary targeting between MoI and Rhino.

I designed Rhino with a kind of more technical / engineer type audience in mind, with a focus on making it easy to pick up for someone who had experience working in AutoCAD already.

MoI on the other hand is more focused on making these kinds of tools work for an artist who may not have any technical or engineering experience and hasn't ever used AutoCAD before.

But yeah, MoI can be used for technical engineering stuff as well, certainly.

- Michael

Yes,

Thats what's so cool about it.
I imagine the use of "Rapid Prototyping" will start growing fast in the future, and also then its good to know that Moi is giving precice output.
I've already used Moi to make some quite complex cnc milled shapes for a model, and Moi kinda "saved the project" because of the shelling.
It worked extremely well in this case, think it was because offsets were quite small. Can unfortunately not post it now, maybe later.

Ok, I won't design a sailboat yet anyways, but a kayak is already in the pipeline..

Regards,
Fredrik

Hi Fredrik, don't hesitate to show us your kayak design!

I am currently building one now, a strip-build 18' cedar sea kayak.
Can't wait to finish and try it this summer.

Moi is definitely a great tool for making such designs, although I bought the plans!

Regards,

Marc

Come on Michael - make him eat his words. Design and build a boat and stick it in Lake Washington :)

Ed

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI

BUT, if you are building a REAL boat to be manufactured , I think you need the very special marine type plugins that you can get for Rhino.

Brian

Good article! For me, a recent nurbs noob, the article was an excellent MoI and nurbs v. polygon modeler introduction.

I am looking forward to having MoI share the tool set with VectorWorks and Cinema 4D. MoI for artists is fine with me but, as an architect, I would like it to be more "technical" to grease a workflow that has to be undoubtedly accurate.

I, for one, believe watching MoI grow up will be fun.

Leonard

Hi Leonard, yeah unfortunately these terms can carry a lot of connotations along with them.

MoI is definitely focused on an accurate type of modeling toolset.

I guess I have a pretty liberal definition of "Artist" - from my perspective I think that there are plenty of people doing "artisan" type work who also need to incorporate precision and accuracy into what they are doing as well...


re: "Technical" - I guess what I'm trying to describe there is that existing solid modeling tools, stuff like SolidWorks, Pro/E, etc... are pretty focused to be used by people who have a background and training in Mechanical Engineering.

In a certain sense, I'm kind of trying to take that same basic kind of solid modeling toolset (which is a great way of making a whole broad category of man-made type shapes), but make that available to people who want to create stuff ("create stuff" = "artist") who may not have a really big background or training in what I would call a technical engineering discipline...

- Michael

Pretty nice article. Just like the author, I've never had MoI crash on me yet (which really is quite impressive!!). I agree on the layering and object naming (let me add instances and basic mapping tools to that), but all in all I feel MoI's most certainly (!) worth it's money. Outstanding service too, I think we can all agree on that.

May there be many versions more.

Hi Marc

Never built a wooden kayak before, but i really want to do that. Just a matter of having the evenings free these days.
We might want to make an Alu kayak, and that is a bit similar to wood strip-building in the way that this also requires to think in singel curved surfaces (or almost single curved).
Do you have a link to the manufacturer of your kit?
And send some photos wen your done!
I''m on the lookout for a nice wood kit too, because i have a friend who wants to build one.

Our company, which i am running with my brother Kristian, has been involved in some kayak designs in cooperation with other companies and inventors.
visit our web page: http://www.pivot.no/index.php/galleri/
Those were modeled in Rhino, and produced directly.
From now on Moi and Rhino will go hand-in hand at our place. The two programs are just a pleasure to use.
The next kayak can be a pure Moi thing, i think.
The only thing i really miss in Moi for the kayak modeling is surface matching. I guess i can sneak the model into Rhino to do that ;)

Regards,
Fredrik

http://www.blueheronkayaks.com/kayak/software/software.htm ;)
http://www.marinerkayaks.com/
All free

That is good to hear Michael. My point stems from the situation where the app maker is interested in both user types but does not provide appropriate tools (some basic) or has some accuracy issues. When the app is huge, changes, corrections, tools do not appear even after a long period of time.

In my business, we need fundamental tools and accuracy but welcome bells and whistles that follow solid basics.

Anyway, MoI is fun and exciting to use and, of course, there will be the growing pains. It all seems to be heading in the right direction.

Borrowing the NY State motto: "Excelsior!" (Ever upward)

Leonard

Hi Leonard, certainly I can understand those kinds of frustrations where some apps seem to not ever get back to fix basic issues even after a long time.

There are many factors that can contribute to that.

It is not at all unusual for new software development to be driven primarily by marketing concerns and the desire to have a big feature checklist to make a marketing brochure look impressive. That kind of focus tends to shunt development activity towards new stuff and take resources away from working on the basic "bread & butter" type stuff.

It can also be a pretty big risk sometimes to change how some of the basic stuff in an application works. It is not unusual for people to complain a lot when things are changed, even if they are overall for the better. Some types of management just do not like to take the risks that can be involved in making those kinds of fundamental changes.

Since I don't have any marketing department and I don't have any management, it helps me to avoid some of these issues ;)


But seriously, I do actually put a very high value on nailing down the basics - that is a major guiding design principle for MoI. I think you'll see some more of that in action soon in the first v2 beta, which has improvements in some of the very basic functions like quicker and easier object scaling and rotation, and enhancements to basic snapping and drawing tools as the first round of new stuff.


I'm glad that you are having fun using MoI!

- Michael

>> It is not at all unusual for new software development to be driven primarily by marketing concerns
>> and the desire to have a big feature checklist to make a marketing brochure look impressive.

Michael ! Where did you get that impression !? Surely not at Microsoft ;-) :-D

Cheers

Thanks Pliou

Interesting stuff. You can check out Freeship too:
http://www.delftship.net/

-Fredrik

Yes I know it from a long time ;)