Hi Michael,

Now that you made the Object Edit Frame essential to the modeling work flow and there is no turning back ;) there is only one annoyance that I come across from time to time.

When I draw a feature on an angle be it a Line, cylinder or box, after rotating it at the desired angle the scale handles are orientated with the object and I am able 1D scale it longer if I need to (see pic obj_1.jpg), but once deselected and then going back to 1D scale the object a bit longer, the Object Frame is now orientated at the extents of the bounding box of the object (see pic obj_2.jpg) and now I can't 'stretch' the object along its axis, I have to do it through Transform > Scale 1D, which is no big deal but it would be nice if the Object Frame would stay orientated with the object, is this feasible?



Thanks

Hi Danny, it is possible but it has a couple of problems...

One problem is that it would mean storing additional orientation information along with each object. It's not much more information for a solid, but for a simple object like a line it kind of bloats up the stored information by a fair amount.

I kind of hesitate to add in too much extra data to every object. Maybe I'm overly paranoid about it, but if you add in a bunch of stuff to the definition of each and every object in the geometry database, then large collections of simple objects like a large number of lines start to consume a lot of extra memory than they really should.

Maybe it would be a good compromise to keep track of the orientation of only breps and not curves... Or maybe I should just add it to everything anyway. I'm not quite sure.


Then there is another complication which is what if you have 2 objects like you show there, and you have oriented them in different directions and then you select both of them, what would you expect for the frame to show in that case?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> Maybe it would be a good compromise to keep track of the orientation of only breps and not curves...
> Or maybe I should just add it to everything anyway. I'm not quite sure.

Isn't that what beta testing is for ?

> Then there is another complication which is what if you have 2 objects like you show there,
> and you have oriented them in different directions and then you select both of them,
> what would you expect for the frame to show in that case?

I would just be expecting the frame to be orientated with the single selected object and to the object boundary extents for multiple selections.

.

Hi Michael,

Danny wrote: there is only one annoyance that I come across from time to time.

I think there is a second one...

When I move a centre rotation pivot outside of object's bounding box I would prefer to have the rotation wheel bigger.



Petr

Another thing, with the bounding box enable,
it's not possible to move the objects selected by it "center" (same than the pivot of rotation)?
Maybe by an arrow middle bottom box (like up arrow rotation) so the middle pivot of move will be visible and moving the box by this move pivot will be easy?
Actually we can see only one middle of the box in moving if we pick the larger middle side or hight middle side
and pivot is invisible and we must make 2 moves! ;)

Hi Petr,

> When I move a centre rotation pivot outside of object's bounding
> box I would prefer to have the rotation wheel bigger.

But how much bigger?

It I always made it bigger, then if you were zoomed in so the object was taking up much of the screen, the wheel would be larger than the current view so you would have to zoom out to use it...

Right now it just stays the same size as it was originally, which is a circle that will pass through the corners of the box.

Changing the size when you drag the origin seems like it might feel a little strange, the wheel would kind of hiccup instead of smoothly moving from its initial location.

- Michael

Hi Pilou,

> it's not possible to move the objects selected by it
> "center" (same than the pivot of rotation)?

You can use the Transform / Move command to do this one.


> Maybe by an arrow middle bottom box (like up arrow
> rotation) so the middle pivot of move will be visible and
> moving the box by this move pivot will be easy?

It would definitely make that operation easier, but it is a big goal for that edit frame to only have a very minimal impact on the screen. I mean I have tried to keep it very sparse and light and not clutter things up.

That has a very big overall benefit of making it easier to keep it turned on all the time without it getting in the way.

Each thing that I would add to it would start to take some of that away, so I can only really add in stuff there that is very frequently used - right now I don't think that dragging by the center point really fits in that category.

But I am planning on adding some other bounding frame functions in the object properties panel, to let you set the width and height of the object. I think I may also have some functions in there for moving the object to a location based on the bounding box, so I think that might be a place where I can add this type of function - we'll see once I have a chance to work on that area.


> Actually we can see only one middle of the box in moving if we pick
> the larger middle side or hight middle side
> and pivot is invisible and we must make 2 moves! ;)

Sorry Pilou, I don't quite understand what you are mentioning in this part.

That pivot point that you see is never used for moving at all, only for scaling or rotation. It shows up when your mouse is over a scaling or rotation grip, but if you move off of that grip it is not shown.

- Michael

<That pivot point that you see is never used for moving at all, only for scaling or rotation. It shows up when your mouse is over a scaling or rotation grip, but if you move off of that grip it is not shown.

Of course :)
But you right use the Function Move can simply resolve the problem !
I was hypnotized by the Yellow box! :)

Hi Petr,

> When I move a centre rotation pivot outside of object's bounding box I would prefer to have the rotation wheel bigger.

I thought that at first also, but then discovering that you can drag the handle/point out as far as you want to get finer rotation, I changed my mind, I don't think it should be bigger reason being what Michael mentions about when zoomed up and not having the wheel in view.

Cheers

"Hi Danny, it is possible but it has a couple of problems...

One problem is that it would mean storing additional orientation information along with each object. It's not much more information for a solid, but for a simple object like a line it kind of bloats up the stored information by a fair amount."


Wouldn't this be solved by simply adding a mode to arbitrarily ORIENT (rotate) the manipulator?

This way he could say dbl-click the manipulator (which puts it into "orient" mode), then rotate it until it matches the orientation of the cylinder he's working on, (I guess dbl-click it again to exit mode) and then perform his 1-D scale...

Granted if the "orient mode" is limited to just rotating the widget, then that last dbl-click to exit wouldn't be necessary - just start dragging and the orient mode is automatically exited.

No extra data per object needed.

Seems like a handy feature for scaling any object. :-)

-Will

Hi Will, it's a good idea but that is pretty well already covered (match to some existing orientation) by the older transform tools, since they let you pick specific points to orient the transforms.

Like for example if you want to scale something along one particular direction, if the edit frame is not oriented in that direction you can instead use Transform / Scale / Scale1D instead - it will let you pick the origin point, and the direction point to orient how the scaling is applied.

Similarly if you want to rotate something by a relative angle to some existing points, the Transform/Rotate command will do that since it asks you for a center point and then a base point for the rotation so that base point allows you to set the same kind of orientation.

That's one thing that is nice about having those Transform tools that handle orientation already available - it let me make the edit frame more focused on doing more simple kinds of stuff very quickly instead.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

On a related note, I was having problems the other day trying to get the >Center< snap to activate for something I was working on...

I forget exactly what I was doing and what kind of object it was (curve, solid) but no matter what I did, I couldn't get a center snap in the middle of it when it was selected.

I seem to remember I was working at the "top" of say a Cylinder or an enlongated cube (think roof of a high-rise building) - I think I had the curve outline of the solid selected and I was trying to either scale or position something else in relation to that center point but I couldn't obtain a center snap of that selection??

However more recently, I've been seeing the center snap display on solids and other closed surfaces without problems (figgas being that I didn't need it now!)

I'm wondering is there any difference with that snap when using curves over solids? (I seem to remember that being the situation while I was working.)

And yes, I had definitely checked to make sure that snap was enabled!

I'll see if I can repro what I was doing and solidify the details but I believe it was a curve (assuming planar, possibly not) that I was attempting to get that center snap on.

-Will

Hi Will, the way that center snap works is it will find the center of a few particular kinds of objects, not necessarily the center of just an irregular solid.

It will find the center point on circle, circular arc, or ellipse curves (or edge curves), and also on polyline curves like a square or rectangle.

It will also find a center point on a face that has trim curves made up all of lines, like a face of a box.

My guess is that your shape did not have anything that fell into these categories, but it is tough for me to say for certain without seeing the actual model file.

I would like to add some functions to create a point at the centroid of a solid's mass, or at the center of its bounding box, but probably not as a full regular osnap because it would add a kind of strange snap off in the middle of space for most cases...

- Michael

Thanks, as I mentioned, if I run into it again, I'll have more concrete evidence for you...

I believe it was simply an enlongated cube - a building as I had mentioned.

I remember using the ortho views trying to snap all the way at the top of the building but I couldn't get the center (dbl-clicked the top edge to get the curve) and then trying it from perspective it would only snap all the way back down on the ground plane...

Anyway, I'll keep an eye out. ;-)

-Will