No doubt this has been discussed before and I have missed it ...

Is there a way to print MoI drawings directly without resorting to screen capture oe using another program?

If not, will it happen soon?

cheers,
eric

Not what you're a looking but this can help

CaptureViewToClipboard – this render a larger image of the active viewport and copy it to the clipboard; you can possibly adjust the resolution and the line width

script:var v = moi.ui.getActiveViewport(); if ( v != null ) { moi.view.lineWidth = 4; v.renderToClipboard( 2560, 2560 ); moi.view.lineWidth = 1; }

Hi Eric, I don't expect to have printing in MoI anytime too soon, the focus currently is still on 3D modeling and 3D data export.

Currently the best way to print is to use Rhino.

I do expect to add printing in the future in to MoI but it will likely be a v3 thing.

For screenshots, the script that PaQ posted above tends to be a better way to do a screenshot since it makes MoI send a higher resolution image to the clipboard than what is normally displayed on the screen.

- Michael

Hi Michael and PaQ ...
Thanks for the very rapid replies.
Yes, I can use Rhino but sometimes for printing I would like the image to look just like the screen image in MoI it's better than any of the shaded versions Rhino has (in my opinion) ... but for drawings that need to be printed to scale (or rendered) I guess that Rhino is my best bet
cheers,
eric

PS ... as sidebar; Yesterday I was getting some render/shading artifacts in Rhino that were surfaces not in the drawing. Opening the drawing in MoI and saving the drawing with MoI corrected the problem when reopened in Rhino. I don't know what went on there but thanks, Michael.

Hi Eric - for doing a kind of "tech drawing style" type shaded view printout then the script that PaQ is a good way of doing that.

To set that up, go to Options / Shortcut keys, Add in a new entry and for the Key part put in whatever key you want to trigger it, like P or something like that, and then for the Command part paste in the script that PaQ showed above.

Then when you hit that key you'll get a higher res screen image put to the clipboard and you can paste it into an image processing program (or even the Windows Paint brush program if you don't have Photoshop or anything similar) and print from there.


With the higher resolution image it can give some more flexibility with making the edges kind of more subtle.

Here are some good examples of this - these were done by Steve using this script to do a higher res screenshot, then shrinking the result image back down in size, to get thinner edges:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2129.10
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1777.10
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1572.6

Depending on what video card you have, you may be able to raise the resolution of the generated image. That script currently will make a 2560x2560 image, but if your video card is pretty new you can raise those numbers, maybe try for a 4096x4096.

That can do a pretty good job of a kind of "technical shade" render with one key press.

- Michael

Hi Eric,

> Opening the drawing in MoI and saving the drawing with
> MoI corrected the problem when reopened in Rhino. I
> don't know what went on there but thanks, Michael.

It most likely would be some edges in a trim loop that did not quite touch each other end-to-end very closely. MoI will do some stuff to heal those kinds of gaps up when it reads in a file.

I'm glad it was able to help out!

- Michael

Must be a limitation of my video card.



If I set it to the res of my monitor I get bush. The higher one fails. Any insight?

Hi Burr, what video card do you have, and how much memory?

If you don't have very much video memory it can limit the size that will work.

- Michael

That particular screenshot is from a Radeon 7200 64 MB Card. Just about what I've seen you call "the bottom of the barrel" before :)

Hi Burr, yeah that's pretty close to the bare minimum just to be able to run MoI... You're just not going to be able to do much of anything that stresses out that card.

Those older cards often have special limits on their available 3D screen size even aside from their limited amount of memory.

That's the first generation Radeon chip - the new Radeons are currently in their 7th generation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon#ATI_Radeon_Processor_Generations .

I don't want to require the brand newest cards to run MoI but it is a pretty good idea to have something more like a 3rd or 4th generation card rather than 1st generation one.

Maybe time to upgrade! :)

- Michael

Hi Michael and PaQ

Thanks again and again ..

It worked like a charm.

eric

Sorry about the big file ... I'll downsize when I send an image again.
eric

At least I learn the harware limits! (Trying to view the good side!) THe old card is on my "Internet computer". I dont expose my better stuff to email and downloads and such.

One kid is 3 this month and the little girly girl is 1.5 years old. I still drool at the Dell site configuring my next box. Just cant seem to get it under $10,000 and cant compromise with less! I may be waiting another year. May be selling my house to upgrade it for the kids and if that happens I'll incorporate the new box into that structure.

I'm sure everyone here will be hearing ALL ABOUT IT when I get something new! :)

Burr

PS. I do have a couple other boxs with a HD 2400 Pro Ati and an Nvidea Quadro2Pro . The old Quadro was my Gem back when but I fear the off the shelf Ati is better than it nowdays.

Whoa is me.....:(

Hi Burr, that makes sense. I was thinking before that you had that radeon 7200 on your "main" workstation!

- Michael

Hi Eric, that's a great looking result, I'm glad that worked for you!

The other thing that you can adjust is the edge width. That script adjusts the width of the edges up so that they remain kind of proportional to their regular size on the screen within that larger image.

But it can be a pretty nice effect to instead let the edges remain smaller and then they become more blended and kind of subtle when you resize that larger image down in size.

To do that, in that script, change the value where it sets lineWidth = 4 to a smaller value, like = 2 or even = 1 instead.

- Michael

Thanks again, Michael ..

When I actually printed the image it looks great. I will try adjusting the edge line width.

I'm assuming that I can convert the .jpg file to a .pdf file so that I can add annotations.

The working drawing set will include numerous sections and details but this view will help a lot for the owner and building contractor to grasp the framing concept.

I have said it before but again won't hurt; I really enjoy working with MoI even though most of my real work is straight lined architectural stuff. MoI does some things better than any other program I have used. I am really looking forward to further developments.

cheers,
eric