Well actually I was talking about having a more formal pipe command - something that would allow you to create pipes in a similar fashion - dial in your diameter, similar to say how offset works now and click to layout the piping.

What would be interesting is if you could also change the diameter at each point so some portions of the piping could be thicker than others.

I guess what I'm looking for is a more interactive way of creating pipes - to be able to take say an existing engine assembly and then "build" the piping around existing contours in way similar to the video instead of just running one-off commands and, creating the pipes piece by piece.

I do imagine however that the coding for the interactivity of this one object type wouldn't be trivial...


Wouldn't some of the code from the Offset and rail sweep commands be usable in something like this?

-Will

Hi Will,

> Wouldn't some of the code from the Offset and rail sweep
> commands be usable in something like this?

Not really, because those commands do not have a very similar UI to what you are talking about... Most of the effort in something like a pipe drawing tool would be in UI related stuff.

There are quite an awful lot of parameters on that Pipe dialog in LWCad that you are referring to - I mean I count 19 different buttons or parameters to adjust there on the dialog that is shown.

That kind of hugely complex single command just does not fit in well with MoI's overall goal of making things simple to use.

Like for example it looks like they have an option for controlling the fillet radius for the bends between lines. In MoI you would do that instead by drawing a polyline curve and then using the Fillet command to create the radius on the corners, then use that curve as input to the sweep command, etc...

It helps a lot to keep things more simple and easy to use by having tools kind of broken apart into elements like this rather than glomping things together into commands that have huge sets of parameters to them.

I guess I'm just not sure what the end payoff is... You can create the same thing in MoI by using a couple of different tools, what would you really gain by having a single glomped together command for "drawing" the pipe directly instead of drawing and processing a curve first?

- Michael

Hey WillBellJr,

An alternative you could use here would be to combine to operations with the sweep function.

I use the freeform tool to click my path, then you can use "quick circle" to click out the diameters along the path at different intervals and diameters, then sweep the quick circles with the path.

It isnt a single command, but it isnt that much more work. One downfall is if the complexity of the path and the interval of the diameter change become overly involved, useing the different viewports to "orient" the quick circles along the path, becomes tedious, though for lessor variations in the diameter along the path it is draww, click click click, BANG! Pipes along a path.

Burr

^Ugh, why do I get the strange feeling my internals look like that?? :-P

Yes, I think where I go off track with MOI and my wishes is when I look for >interactive GUI< based tools more than simple command oriented functions.

I saw all of those buttons for the LWCAD functions but I certainly wasn't looking for all of that - just simply the click-click placement of segments and how the pipe would bend automatically etc., adjusting the corner radius would have been icing...

I already expect to do that kind of work using LWCAD after I upgrade to v3 (gotta have some justification for keeping Lightwave installed) but of course staying in MOI would have been ideal...

-Will

Hi Will. Rhino has a "pipe" command which allows you to input many different radii anywhere along the curve. But i find it's rarely of much advantage over the sweep command. In most cases, Sweep is more useful because the inputs are reusable and you can set them up more accurately with reference to other geometry. Having a pipe command is only useful for doing simple things...

PS - Sorry for mentioning the "R" word !!! :)

jonah

Hi Will, the problem is that it is kind of tough to have a combined function like that without also having all those parameters come along with it.

I mean for example with the corner radius, there isn't really one single corner radius that could be considered the "proper" one for any given pipe, so that makes it pretty tough to just fix it at one certain value only. It would need to be adjustable.

Unless there is a natural "best" value for something like that, it kind of means that all those parameters have to be in there...

- Michael

Yeah, I really produced a Colon looking thing huh? Ha! But it could havre just as easily been the dimensions you pick.

ALL the MoI Gui tools ARE just commands. Michael has given us the ability to adjust this at will.

I use the plugin gallery and have GUI at one button:





Could make as many buttons for multiple "Commands" as I want to stuff in there!

Really what your asking is to have Petr's Quickcircle script integrate with the freeform scripts click then do an auto sweep at the end!

I wonder if Peter has an inklin to figure out if he can combine these in that way?

Start freeform tool... At point select, pause and wait for quickcircle, quickcircle size and select....resume...At completion, sweep quickcricles with freeform!

I suppose it's easier said than done, eh Petr? :)

Hi, yeah, I rather wait till Michael puts in a kind of an official way to modify or rearrange the GUI (if ever) - as it is now, I've lost scripts that I was using due to updates and moving to the V2 beta etc.

Laziness on my part for sure, but hunting down and keeping track of a bunch of scripts and modifying HTML files for me right now is just not my focus.

-Will

Understandable Will. I have a small setup here that jumps around between a few computers and os's so I feel your pain. to manage this through say 5 installs of moi and the beta changes, I created a folder with the structure duped in it. to update all my MoI's is just a copy all contents. If you try to do it from the moi folder you will never be able to remember all the files. AND, surely I cant do this between Beta's so when the next Beta comes out, it would take a bit more time to have everything I've now gotten used to! Have I hurt myself by trying to get to much too soon!!!? (Story of my life) Ha!

But for sure, If you can wait till it's all over then you have saved yourself the headache! When the dust clears, it will be free, smooth and fun design!

Burr

Thanks, when I get some time I'll try your method with the folder.

Being that script and command key assignments are so important to MOI, it'll be nice when Michael puts in an official way to carry forth these settings (and maybe even GUI customization as well)...

-Will

If you mean that you assign "Q" to "Quick circle" as a short cut, thats jsut one file called moi.ini (I know you knew) So thats one of my extra steps is I keep a text doc in this folder with just the "key assignments" that way when a new beta comes out, I dont have to worry about a different ini file format being ruined by a straight overwrite, I just copy and paste the "add-in" commands only. So my text file looks like this:

Shift+S=SineWave
Ctrl+P=ConstraintPolyline
Ctrl+Q=QuickCircle
Alt+C=CSec
Alt+D=CustomDistance
Alt+G=SpurGearProfile
Alt+R=RingCircle
Alt+P=Pipe2
Alt+T=SelectByType
Alt+S=ScaleArray
Ctrl+A=script:moi.geometryDatabase.selectAll();
Ctrl+Alt+P=script:var img = moi.view.screenshot( 'viewpanel', false ); var name = img.getSaveFileName(); if ( name != '' ) img.save( name );
Ctrl+Alt+S=script:moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects().getSolids().setProperty( 'selected', true );

Easy to just paste this into any ini file for instant custom short assign.

Surely having this integrated will be nice and after the beta and development there will be no issue with changing ini files so a simple 1 file save or move will be easy and probably integrated somehow.

Thanks for indulging!
Burr