Hi Frenchy !
Still can remember the bicentenaire with Jean Paul Goude scene in Paris in 1989 !
Peter

>>now where are those MoI notes

For instance:
1) http://moi3d.com/wiki/Hidden_Secrets
2) http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1312.1
3) http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/doc/releasenotes.html

Petr

Hi Danny - that one is an Alt or right-click on the menu item itself for batch processing of checking/unchecking items.

But there is also another way to use Alt - if you hold down Alt when you are picking a point while drawing inside the viewport, that will suppress snapping while you have it held down. So that's a quick way to turn them all off for just one single pick.

Like Petr mentions, if you want to turn them all off for several picks, then the regular way to do that is to click the "Object Snap" button in the bottom toolbar so that it is not highlighted in orange - that is the global Object snap on/off button. You can use that to disable them all without disturbing your filter settings.

- Michael

Let's see a couple of small notes I missed:


You can now read in GIF format images for background images.


I already mentioned the grid snap and object snap working together on axis-aligned lines. There is also some similar stuff for making "on srf" object snap work in combination with grid snap at the same time.

If you move your mouse over an axis-aligned plane with both "on srf" object snap and grid snap active at the same time, you'll get a point snapped to the grid but on the surface of the plane. In the 3D view this also works on stuff like the side walls of an axis-aligned box.

For curved surfaces in the 3D view, "on srf" will override grid snap, but by default in the 2D views (Top/Front/Right) onsrf will be disabled for curved surfaces so that it does not get in the way of picking grid points. There is a moi.ini setting for this behavior:
[Drawing Aids]
DisableOnSrfInOrthoWhenGridSnap=y

There is also another setting for disabling onsrf entirely in all views (including the 3D view) when grid snap is also active:
[Drawing Aids]
DisableOnSrfWhenGridSnap=y


It looks like that clears out the last of my notes.

- Michael

(edit - fixed typo in second .ini setting)

Well, I have gathered all new stuff together on the page here. It is quite impressively long list, isn't it :)

By the way, correct setting for disabling onsrf entirely is:
[Drawing Aids]
DisableOnSrfWhenGridSnap=y

I also noticed that edit frame got a strange relation to the original object after rotating with Ctrl and edit frame's rotation grip (i.e. when I make a clone).

Petr

good job petr !!!

Hi Petr, thanks for gathering all that up!

re: Ctrl + rotate grip - yup that was an edit frame bug, thanks for reporting it, it is fixed for the next release.

- Michael

Here's a PDF of petr's efforts.

Michael T.

Quote-----There is a new setting in the moi.ini that
can be used to disable surface snap plane
alignment:
[Drawing Aids]
UseSurfaceSnapPlanes=y

Is it a Brian day? I don't know what a moi.ini is or what I am supposed to do with that"Drawing Aids etc" line of info?

Brian

Hi Brian - moi.ini is the file where MoI saves all of its settings to.

Normally the settings that are frequently used also have some more normal UI for changing them, like checkboxes, and edit fields in the Options dialog.

But when I am developing new features I will occasionally put some kinds of options or things relating to the new features just inside the moi.ini file and not add any UI for that particular one. Sometimes these may be kind of "emergency use only" type things, like for instance the one that you asked about there is for turning off one piece of the draw-on-surfaces mechanism that is new for v2.

That way if there was some major bug where that new feature was crashing or getting in the way of normal use, there is at least some possible way to turn it off.

Basically if everything works as intended you should not need to change that setting at all.

But I wanted to mention it so that I had published the complete notes on all the new stuff in the beta, some people want to know all the details so I try to mention all the details when giving a full overview.

Most of the time if you see something like that when you wonder "what use is that", it probably means it is not useful for your particular case and you can just ignore it.

- Michael

Michael
You are saying that that stuff I can not actually see/find, or access anyway, in the MoI App folder?
Maybe those passages of wordings should be in red to highlight as "Not for the interest of Brian!"!

Brian (Who is just over curious!)

Hey Brian,
It's actually good to be curious about this stuff. Thats what makes you good at it.

Let me partake.

When you select a checkbox in MoI's options dialog, How does it know you selected that option the next time you open Moi?

The answer is an "ini file". Alot of apps use them. Usually you can find it in the root folder of the application. (It's just a simple text document that the application can read and write to. To store those "Settings".

Do you know what Windows explorer is?

Hit the windows key and E at the same time. then navigate to the MoI folder. (if you dont know what that means I can explain further)

In that folder is where you will find the MoI.ini file. Open it with notepad.

Just look around at first, dont change anything.

In there you will see a bunch of lines that seem odd but you can soon recognize them. As with the checkbox example I started with, there could be a line that say's "checkbox1.state=y" What that could mean is that Michael named one of his checkboxes "checkbox1" and then it has things that can be set like the "state" with a value of Y(es) or N(o)--Checked or unchecked--!. Sometimes 0 means yes and 1 means no. Get it?

What they are talking about is changing the behavior of things in Moi without actually cluttering up the UI with more checkboxes and things. (Soon there would be 50 checkboxes, one for Burr, one for Brian, etc.....).

Ask again if you want more info, I can talk to you about what it is, but for specifics on how to use it, there are others that could answer better.

Burr

Hi Brian,

> You are saying that that stuff I can not actually see/find,
> or access anyway, in the MoI App folder?

It's normally in this folder (for Windows XP):
C:\Documents and Settings\ [your login name] \Application Data\Moi\moi.ini

Windows will by default hide that "Application Data" folder, but if you turn on some setting in Windows explorer to show hidden files then it should show up, or also you can just type in that folder name and it will go there even if it was not displayed in the regular Explorer view.

- Michael

There I go with incorrect advice again! maybe I should just give up. :)

Burr

Found it, thanks.
Brian

Hi Burr, actually all the stuff you mentioned was spot-on except for the location of the file.

Definitely it makes it easier for me to add in special settings to that file only rather than cluttering up the UI for every single thing.

I wish that I could put the file in the location where you expected it (in MoI's main folder in \Program Files\), except Windows does not allow users with limited access accounts (like not set up as a machine administrator) to write any data into that folder. So to support limited users in XP, (and also just regular users in Vista now), I write that file by default into that other location which a limited rights user is allowed to write into.

You can actually move the moi.ini file into the main program folder where MoI.exe is if you want to - MoI will check for it there first and use it from there if it finds it. That's also what you need to do if you want to bring MoI along with you on a USB stick and also bring along your settings.

- Michael

Yeah I just wasnt thinking. I keep mine in the app root "Beacause" I use the usb stick function to go to my brothers house with MoI!

"REALLY" love the usb option you give us!

Burr

Michael,

I really, really like the scale/rotate manipulator. Using the menu for that got quite tiring.

Great work!

I'll give the surface snapping a try when I have more time to play with it.