Help for amateure!

I was looking at the first post in this thread. trying to re-create the rails he used.

to draw these would you do it by using the different viewports "while" drawing?

sorry for the 2d brain. one quick explanation from someone and then I can experiment and figure it out.

The only way I could figure out to draw them was to click in front, move to 3d and go up in z-click, move to top and cross over-click. Does this make sense and am I on the right track? or is there something I should look at as to not develope bad learning?

Thanks for any input,
Burr

BTW: I was also trying to create his sweep by creating a second profile and then rotating it to get the twist (a scaling rail to get the shape). I was getting some results but seemed like alot of work to do what he did simply. Michaels solution made it work.

The blob at the top was interesting. I tried to delete some of the points from within MoI and it changed the topology of the top surface. I dont have rhino to do what the suggestion was. is there another generic explanation so I may know how to apply it with some of the other apps I have?

Hi Burr, probably instead of drawing something like that all in just one shot of the Curve command, it is easier to draw a planar curve to start with, and then turn on control points with Edit/Show pts and move them around.

Once a point already exists, it is just a bit easier to reposition it by dragging in a different view, or using rotation on it, etc... Undo works a bit easier for that, because you can undo a small tweak instead of undoing the whole last point which is what will happen in the Curve command.


It's not a bad exercise to do it all in one go of the Curve command and it is possible, but typically I would recommend that kind of stuff for only a small number of points like if you are going to draw 3 or 4 points, and you know you want a specific arrangement with stuff coming up in z, etc.... - then you can drag out some construction lines to track in z but it is rather tedious to do this with more than about 4 points or so.

Also with adjusting control points afterwards, you may want to get the Nudge command from Petr's page here: http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/ - that will enable you to use some keystrokes to move a control point (that you turned on with Edit/Show pts) a small amount in x,y, or z.

- Michael

Thanks Michael, That is great stuff. I'll mow over his scripts more later.

The Shortcut keys are stored in the ini file. My V2 has an ini file in the root directory and it stored them there. (this could be my doing) Is the ini compatible for me to just copy it to the V1 root, (or the app data folder)?

I was moving them around to facilitate the usb install.

Thanks,
Burr (Just call me NURBS)

Hi Burr, yes by default the moi.ini file will go to a central location (in XP it is: C:\Documents and Settings\Michael\Application Data\Moi\moi.ini ).

But when MoI starts it will look for any moi.ini that you may have copied into the same folder as MoI.exe and if it finds one there it will use it instead of the shared one. (this is what you would normally set up to run off of a USB drive).

So if you want to have a particular installation use different settings than another one, that is one way to do it. You can also pass the path to an .ini file to MoI.exe as a command line parameter to make it use a specific one.

The v2 and v1 .ini files are compatible, you can copy them back and forth to one another. The v2 one will write some additional stuff to it, but that's ok those extra new things will just be ignored by v1.

- Michael

Happy 4th. :)

The rails were a helix on the side, a flat helix on top and projected onto revolved surface. The revolved surface was a cylinder with a domed top, and a fillet around the edge.

Thanks Nick,
Thats a way to get odd yet precise curves. Thanks. I also tried just drawing it. I could, yet wasnt sure how to be precise or if my thinking was the best way. Both yours and Michaels way were great help to me in my learning!

Thanks,
Burr