Hi Duke,

> Thanks for the reply. For that first example, I was hoping for a few less
> clicks/a similar workflow to sketchup or form-z as you can see at 1:23
> here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XspVX7vxIm4

MoI is not currently super-duper optimized for doing this kind of block modeling...

It is something that I would like to tune up in the future though, I think with MoI's toolset there is a good possibility of adding more functions to the Extrude command so that it would be able to add or remove material directly built into the extrude.

Currently you do have to do things like do the extrude and then do the boolean after you have done the extrude. It's not a particularly big deal if you are doing simple things but yes it would be nice to be more streamlined if you have a lot of them to do.

It hasn't really been a big priority to make that super efficient yet in MoI partly because I kind of figure that if you are doing a whole bunch of blocky extruded architectural shapes, that SketchUp is a highly tuned tool which is focused almost exclusively on doing nothing but that kind of thing, so why not use the right tool for the job instead of MoI for that kind of a thing?

But that's just the explanation for the current priorities, I do expect to improve this area in the future.

Usually people don't focus on using MoI as a replacement for SketchUp to do SketchUp-like things, rather they use MoI to do things like curved objects which are not really feasible to do in SketchUp's kind of block-based operations...

- Michael

Fair enough, although the reason I was looking at it was for just that - a "better" sketchup. I deal with alot of blocks, but our architects are also very fond of curves inter-mingling with said blocks, which sketchup isn't so hot at.

Hi Duke, if you are interested in curvy parts, then certainly it is worthwhile to keep exploring MoI.

I mean despite MoI not being as fully optimized as SketchUp for blocky type stuff, I think it is very fair to say that MoI does handle blocky stuff better than SketchUp handles curvy stuff.

It will take a bit getting used to, like drawing 2 nested rectangles instead of one rectangle and then interior lines.

The blocky handling in MoI means you have to do like an extra step, not really that you can't get the job done at all...

But I mean what you are basically asking for is a program that does everything that other specialty programs do equally as well but also none of the specialty program's weaknesses.... I mean I can understand why you would want that but it is a pretty tall order, you may have to kind of adjust your expectations a bit there, especially when it is relatively early on in MoI's life cycle. I mean MoI version 1.0 was just released this year, SketchUp is in version 6.0 ...

Especially early on in MoI's life I have actually tended to try and make it useful for doing different styles of things than existing programs, the idea there is that it then gives you a useful extra tool to do new things, rather than just trying to do the same things that can already be done very well elsewhere. This will kind of change a bit as MoI matures some more.

- Michael

Hi Duke, one other thing that I should mention, you may be interested in several of the new things for v2, there is a summary of the new stuff so far here: http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/doc/V2releasenotes.html .

That includes several things of interest to architects, such as Feet & inches units (for the US), and SAT format export to enable exporting curved surface data into Revit.

Also some of the new drawing tools that let you draw directly on surfaces, similar to SketchUp in some aspects.

- Michael

Hi Anis,

Which GIF animation program do you use?

I am using a demo of Ulead GIF Animator 5,
but the image quality is poor

I know GIF aren't the best,but i am impressed
by your examples

He's using camtasia I suppose -> http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.asp

Someone mentioned Jing on the forum I tried it Here in the zip file, I think it's pretty cool.
It's flash format and it's free.

Ok Paq,

Thanks

>Someone mentioned Jing on the forum I tried it Here in the zip file, I think it's pretty cool.
It's flash format and it's free.
~Danny~>

Hey Danny, It is very powerful also. It's Camtasia's Beta testing new idea's. I think moving on to the .net framework 3.

I'm on a w2k box now, so no go. My dev machine has Camtasia, but I do have a machine that could use a recorder and will put this on that. Very cool!

Thanks for the pointer.
Burr

Hi Paolo...

Like PaQ mentioned, I use camtasia 5 now...

-Anis

Thanks Anis,

I tested camtasia 5,and it works great.

GIF quality is better,although i guess
i have to use shockwave files(I do hate dose plugins)
for maximum quality

check also camstudio.org