Thanks Michael ...

I sure know how I am going to spend my evening, too.

Great program with great future promise.

eric

Hi French Pilou,

Did you get the a warning that there is a problem with the model?

I get the same holes as your attachement just more of them.

See attached jpg.

No message for me ;)
Google Sketchup free 6.4.112

new try
Now I have made that
Erase the Up and down facetts rounded
then select for up and down the outlined internal then Planar = only one "facet" for each up & down
Export SKP
Result :in Sketchup all is fine except the Uper face is inversed so inverse it and all is fine

Are you sure of the construction of your Cylinder?

Hi Danny, thanks for the feedback!

> The Free Rotation option with a spaceball is like,
> getting rid of my crutches and I'm finally walking
> normal again, thanks for that Doc :)

I thought that would be more comfortable for you! :)


> CPlane IMHO is one of the major updates in modelling
> tools added, it will make modelling life so much easier
> again, I thought MoI couldn't get any easier and the
> placement intelligence behind it makes it so quick.

Great, I'm glad that the placement mechanism is working well for you.

Yeah when you place its origin point it will try to automatically align itself to the object you snapped on to. Hopefully for most situations that will be the orientation you were looking for already and you can be done right there.

But after the initial placement you can also click and drag on the axis lines to get a kind of "align to 3 points manually" type of style as well. After you have placed one axis, it will behave a bit differently for the 2nd axis drag - the first axis that you dragged will stay locked in place and the next pick will rotate about that first locked axis. This can be a bit strange if you are just trying to play around with dragging axes around because every other drag behaves a bit differently, but it should make sense I think if you are focused on placing them by 2 picks after placing the origin.


Then the idea is that this same placement mechanism will also be used for a Transform/Orient tool for aligning objects to one another - that one will use 2 of those tripod pickers, one for a base orientation on the object and then one for the target orientation.


> One thing with CPlane Michael, is that when using
> construction line/helpers to set the new plane the helper
> lines tend to hang around for a while, then they disappear
> after a few more commands, was this intended ?

Oops, that's a bug, thanks for reporting it. Should be easy to fix.

It's kind of a side effect of CPlane not really being a regular "Command" - one reason why it is not a regular command is so that you can actually use it while you are running inside of a command already.

- Michael

Hi Eric, thanks for reporting the SketchUp problem.

> Is it a user fault or is it a bug?
> I used the default meshing option, and tried both weld edges and not.

It looks like a bug, it will take a bit of examining to see what the problem is, thanks for posting the example file.

One thing you can do right now to tune this up is to alter the model a bit. Right now the top planar face of your curved piece looks like it came from a sweep:



If you delete that top face (and the matching one on the bottom), then select the object that now has open ends, and then run the Construct / Planar command, it will create caps that are made up of simple 4-point planes that have been trimmed to that outline. Simple plane surfaces like that will export better to Skp format, it will become just one single face in the .skp file. (EDIT: same thing that Pilou mentions above)


Another thing is that SketchUp does not seem to like very long and skinny triangles very much, you may get some problems or also just a generally rough look to your model if there are very thin triangles in it, such as in this area:



There are some meshing settings that you can adjust to try and reduce that. One relatively easy way to tune it up is to enter in a value for Aspect ratio limit. Here I entered a value of 6 in there, which will subdivide polygons that have a long side more than 6 times the length of the smaller side. That results in this kind of a mesh structure instead:



Unfortunately that will also drive the polygon count up quite a bit as well and SketchUp is also kind of sensitive to that as well, so it isn't automatically always better to do this. But if you want a smoother look to shapes in SketchUp it can help.

Here is the result in SketchUp with simple plane caps and reduced skinny triangles:



I will be looking at your example file today though to see if I can find out where the problem is, it is probably something like SketchUp not liking to have duplicated points or points that are too close to each other in a polygon outline.

Unfortunately SketchUp is rather more sensitive to how its polygons are arranged than a typical polygon modeling program. It may take a few passes to identify situations that it does not like to handle.

- Michael

Thanks for the tips Michael and French Pilou :)

I will remember this for my exports.

This was just a test (don`t really use SketchUp that much any more, sad but true).
I usually tweak my mesh exports, but didn`t bother this time, just wanted so check out the export function.

By the way, the curved object was not a swept curve.
I made it with the 3pts arch, extruded the curve, used shell, and then fillet on the edges.

I think this may be a SketchUp issue rather than a Moi issue.
The reason for this is that in the past when I imported geometry from other software (mainly acad/revit) there was always a lot of "cleaning" to do.
Must be some kind of tolerance/precision setting if I remember correctly, I got different results when I played with these settings.
Almost all the models and 2d plans were useless to model with, and I ended up just using them as guides/references.

Anyway, love the new options/functions, can`t wait to see the object organizer!

Thanks again for a killer app and support!


Eric

Hi Eric - it is definitely a big goal for MoI's exporters to try and eliminate the amount of tweaking and cleaning that has to be done.

It just saves a huge amount of time if the export is all clean right from the beginning instead of needing further work.

Of course with the very first release of a brand new exporter there may be a few issues to discover and tune up. It certainly helps a lot when I have an example to work with, thanks for posting it!

I've looked into that example and the problem is actually what I had guessed earlier - SketchUp does not like it when points of a polygon are too close together, it looks like when points of a polygon are closer than 0.001 units together it will cause SketchUp to flag the face as badly formed. That happens to be the case in some of those polygons along the top because the UV grid of the fillet is just a little bit different than the UV grid of that top flat piece. So when these 2 UV grids get combined to have a "watertight" outline for the polygon it has some points in it pretty close together.

For the next beta I will be able to solve this problem by merging points like that together.


> I think this may be a SketchUp issue rather than a Moi issue.

I guess so, actually I'm kind of surprised that it is sensitive to this amount of closeness, I would have thought it would have had to be a smaller distance for it to be a problem.

But anyway I'll be able to solve it in MoI's SKP exporter to not create this situation that SketchUp does not happen to like.

- Michael

Congrats on the release Michael - I'm loving the cplane function!


Actually one thing I miss from back my Rhino days - would it be easy for you to add a right-click function to the Save icon to open the >export dialog<??

Typically I click the icon to save the .3dm version of a model.

To export, I have to go into the file menu to get to the Save As item.

Being able to right-click the Save icon and get the export dialog would bring that nice shortcut back. :-)

-Will

Michael,

Just a word to say i had export problems to sketchup : i work on a model this afternoon ( wood deck + wood fence around) : After the export i have lost the position of the fence compared to the initial deck position (around 30cm translation of the general fence) + i have lost the general scale of the model : 4cm in the MOI file was 9,3 cm in Skp.file.

I hope it is minor problems ...

Bye,

Pierre.

Maybe you must also post the original 3dm?

Hello Michael,

Just wanted to confirm that I also have the same problem with Sketchup export.

It seems that, even if MoI's Preferences are set in metric, it exports in relation to imperial and also relate to the wrong multiplier
(ex. : set MoI to Meters and draw a 10 meters high box,
and set Sketchup to Meters -3D
on export/import, 10 meters translate into 0,254 meters (one inch is 2,54 cm)

Also, I noticed that:
- if I draw a box from an extruded rectangle and
- only the rectangle is selected and
- then try to export (without selecting the box) ,
- the Save dialog asks the user to enter the file name but there is no prompt to ask the user to select the objects to export
(because the rectangle is selected).
- Consequently, the file is not created.

And if nothing is selected when the user chooses export, the prompt to select objects to export appears but, if I select the rectangle (and not the box), the file won't be created.

Have a good day,

Michel

In SKetchup regulated in unities that you want: say (cm 3D)
Import the Moi object (created in any unites)
Select All
Make group
Take the Tape Measure
Measure (with 2 clicks) one edge of anything that you know the size must be (say 5 cm if SKetchup is regulated in cm):
12.7000 cm is realy measured on the edge
Enter 5
"Do you want resize the model?" Yes
Explode the group
That all!
You will have all thing you want even something is not yet resolved in Moi :)

Bonjour Pierre et Michel,

Thanks for reporting the units problems - it looks like internally SketchUp stores all values as inches which I didn't expect.

It should be easy for me to fix this for the next beta release.


For the moment the easiest workaround is probably this - when you want to export from MoI, go to Options / Units / Units options, and turn on "Scale on unit system change".

Then under Options / Units, switch the current unit system to inches. This will scale your model.

Then go back and turn off (uncheck) "Scale on unit system change" and switch back to your actual desired units. This time it will switch the unit system without changing or scaling any numeric values. Now when you export it should be correct in SketchUp.


This won't be necessary in the next beta, I will fix that up to be automatically in the scale that SketchUp is expecting.

- Michael

Great relase Michael! My compliments! :)

Hi Will, I think that sounds like a good idea to do a right-click on Save to do "Save As".

I will see if I can set that up for the next beta release.

- Michael

Michael

Thanks to Burr I really have V2 set up for me beautifully.

In going through some of the alternative settings in your list of the updates there are several where I can not seem to see a difference between some of the alternatives---not that I needed them I think. (Example Perspective/Parallell 3D View Projection) Anyway thats by the way.

There is a whole lot of "scripting" stuff in MoI that is outside of my experiences with other apps. A huge amount on the Wiiki that I am lost with----maybe others also? Is there a need for a refinement of understanding/access for these things for us of less ability?

This from your list has me completely stumped!

New scripting stuff New methods on a brep getJoinedEdges(), getNakedEdges() and getSeamEdges() which can be used to retrieve an object list of those particular kinds of edges of an object. This now enables using this keyboard shortcut to highlight all edges that are not joined: script:var gd = moi.geometryDatabase; gd.deselectAll(); var breps = gd.getObjects().getBreps(); for ( var i = 0; i < breps.length; ++i ) breps.item(i).getNakedEdges().setProperty( 'selected', true );

I probably don't need to know but others, unspoken, may have similar questions.

Brian

Hi Brian,

> In going through some of the alternative settings in your
> list of the updates there are several where I can not seem
> to see a difference between some of the alternatives---not
> that I needed them I think.

Yup, I suppose that means that it was not an important feature or option for your particular use of MoI.

Different people use MoI to do a lot of different types of things. It's not very surprising that every single feature added will not apply directly to one person's work or preferences. So I think that's just what you're seeing in this case.

It's a pretty normal thing, I would expect for you to run across similar situations for every beta release, probably...


> (Example Perspective/Parallell 3D View Projection)

A perspective view will be what you are most likely used to, where objects that are further away form the eye point get smaller in size on the screen:



A parallel view will look like this instead (this is a parallel view of the exact same objects as above):



Unlike a perspective view, objects in a parallel view are the same size no matter how far they are in depth away from the eye point.


Some people may want to use a paralllel view to get a particular special effect, like for example saving out a different style view to a 2D Illustrator .ai file to get a certain kind of isometric line drawing look. Also a few people may be used to working with other CAD programs that use a parallel view so this will let them set up MoI to behave the same as they are used to.

Probably you do not need to produce 2D isometric drawing in Illustrator and you probably haven't spent a lot of time using a different CAD program with that type of a view, so this won't really be of any particular use to you.


> There is a whole lot of "scripting" stuff in MoI that is outside of
> my experiences with other apps.

A lot of the scripting stuff is for solving very particular problems or automating certain specific tasks, which again probably don't apply to your particular work.


> Is there a need for a refinement of understanding/access for
> these things for us of less ability?

No, probably not - like I mentioned before many of those things apply to particular kinds of work and it is not generally expected that every single script or feature will be equally useful to every single user - many of them are for helping out particular cases.


> This from your list has me completely stumped!

That one is for selecting edges that are "naked" - that is not joined to another edge. If you are trying to create models that will be manufactured or constructed on a rapid prototyping machine, you generally need to have a fully closed solid for those to work properly. If you don't have a fully closed solid it means that there are some edges in your model that are not sealed to other edges, this will let you see where those edges are since when they are selected they are highlighted in yellow.

Again, if you are not having your model built on a rapid prototyping machine then this is probably not as much of a helper for you.


This will just be a very normal occurrence for new features and particularly stuff like scripting notes. Those are new features that someone had requested, so I like to have them in the list so that the people waiting for them know that they are now available.

- Michael

Michael, as usual, thanks so much.

Sorry that it again took up your time but it again suggests, maybe, some categerisation of things into pigeon holes applicable to an end user?---well, just a thought.

See, you are completely to blame!------you are just far to good in helping people!

This customer closeness really is a wonderful breath of fresh air.

Brian

Hi Brian,

> Sorry that it again took up your time but it again suggests,
> maybe, some categerisation of things into pigeon holes
> applicable to an end user?---well, just a thought.

I guess it would solve that problem!

But also at the same time add additional work and processes and things for me to worry about for each beta release... That part I'm not so sold on! :)

If I have to worry about too many things for each beta it will tend to make me release fewer of them to cut down on the additional work.

It's a lot easier for me to just list all the changes and not really dig into much extensive detail about which categories of users each particular one can be helpful for... Probably the best policy is if something sounds like it is not useful for you then it is best to just assume that it is not something that applies to your particular work.

That's not to say that I don't mind explaining a few particular things that you might be curious about! But in general it just is not practical for me to go into great detail on every single thing, especially when for many of the things it would just be an elaborate explanation on why it is not useful to you in particular...

- Michael

"especially when for many of the things it would just be an elaborate explanation on why it is not useful to you in particular..."

We both need a fairy-godmother!

Thanks mate.

Brian