I'm currently making a model where I had to lay out several concentric circle curves like so:



My problem was that I knew where the outermost circle and innermost circle had to be, but I had to scale all of the circles in-between by hand until they looked fairly evenly distributed. I realize now that I could have measured the distance between the inner and outer circle, divided that by the number of circles I needed, then repeatedly used inset curve, but it occurred to me that repeated insets might be a very good thing to have a tool for in MOI.

It would have several modes just like a directional array:

1. Define distance between each offset and number needed.

2. Define extent of outermost offset and number of offsets needed.

3. Define distance between each offset and extent to outermost offset.

In my case I would have used mode 2 to define the offset distance of the outermost circle and told it that there should be 6 circles all together.

Let me know what you think of this proposal.

BTW, I love working with MOI! :D

Could you use Scale Array maybe?

Scale Array not working in the latest beta it seems though!

Brian

Hi LOTRJ, it's a good idea!

The only problem is that Offset is pretty full of a lot of options already, I'm kind of hesitant to more to the heap right now.

Actually when you mentioned making it work like directional array, that got me thinking me thinking that it should actually be possible to use the current directional array tool to solve the problem.

The way you can do it is to create a "Point" object which is available under Draw curve / More / Point.

That lets you create a single point which can be used for snapping on to.

So if you create a starting point object on the inner circle like this:



Then you can use Array Dir to create the spacing that you want, like so:




Then all the spacing is set up, you can use each of those points as a snap target for Offset (with Through point mode) or for drawing a circle with the Circle command.

- Michael

Hi Brian,

> Scale Array not working in the latest beta it seems though!

Is it possible that you haven't installed it yet into the new beta?

Custom commands that you have installed in an old beta do not come over automatically to a newly installed beta, that may be the problem that you're running into.

I'd like to do something to improve this in the future, but I have not had a chance to work on that yet.

- Michael

Perhaps it doesn't have to be extra settings in the current inset tool.

I was thinking more along the lines of a separate 'inset array' tool to go with the other array tools.

Thanks for showing me that point reference method, I hadn't thought of that.