OK - I got it! Nick got it - I think I was choosing the curve sitting right on top of the one I wanted. Not using the beta though. I just bought a license last week and am using the v2 beta. How can you tell if you are choosing the wrong one?
Here is the finished model, ready for render:

>How can you tell if you are choosing the wrong one?

If you're using the latest beta version, look at that object properties panel, or whatever Michael calls it.

The one that says "closed crv" is just a line, and wont fillet



but the one that says "edge", is the edge of a surface that you want to fillet.



wish they had that when i started with Moi and was doing the same thing you were. :-)

Nick:
Yep - I see. Thanks for that. Unless it's neon and flashing, I would have never even noticed it!

Yeah that is probably one of the biggest remaining "gotcha" type things in MoI right now where construction curves can interfere with selecting edges.

I have some ideas on how to improve this - one of which is now in the v2 beta where you can look over there to know if the selected object is a curve or edge, but there are also some other things that I can probably do to help out additionally when I get a chance to work on it in the future.

Right now it tends to be a good habit to hide or delete your construction curves after you use them to get them out of the way.

One thing is that if your main solid object is deselected, then when you move your mouse over top of curve-like object, ones that highlight and that select then will be independent curves, because the edges will only be targeted once the main object has already been selected. So that's how you can pick independent curves - make sure your solid/surface object is deselected and then you will target curves rather than edges.

- Michael

>Right now it tends to be a good habit to hide or delete your construction curves after you use them to get them out of the way.

Thats why I like this script:

 script:moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects().getCurves().setProperty( 'selected', true ); 

Just run the script, then hide them. :-)

<<Yeah that is probably one of the biggest remaining "gotcha" type things in MoI right now where construction curves can interfere with selecting edges.

I have some ideas on how to improve this - one of which is now in the v2 beta where you can look over there to know if the selected object is a curve or edge, but there are also some other things that I can probably do to help out additionally when I get a chance to work on it in the future.>>

Is it possible to have curves highlight in a different color than solids/surfaces?

Hi Michael...

>Ash --> Is it possible to have curves highlight in a different color than solids/surfaces?
I am agree with ash

Another idea can be :
after use sketch to build 3D object use a feature like extrude, revolve, etc "the source sketch" will automatically go to hide mode ( disappear )

Hi Tony,

> Is it possible to have curves highlight in a different
> color than solids/surfaces?

It's an interesting idea... But visually different colors for the same kind of state (being "selected") kind of makes for a confusing situation initially for someone just learning the software. They wouldn't know what the colors meant, and might think that it meant that one thing was not "really selected" or something.

It is kind of good to have just one consistent color to indicate selection, that way there is no confusion about whether something is selected or not, it is all consistent.

- Michael

Hi Anis

> Another idea can be :
> after use sketch to build 3D object use a feature like extrude,
> revolve, etc "the source sketch" will automatically go to hide
> mode ( disappear )

I've thought about that some, but it would mean that you would have to do extra work to unhide those objects if you wanted to adjust the revolve for example by editing the source curve and seeing the surface update.

So that would add more steps and complicate that particular workflow.

The main problem is being able to select one or the other when you need an edge, I think that in the future when I get a chance to work on it, I may try to detect this situation of a coincident curve and edge and put up a small pop-up menu just for this case that has 2 choices on it for which one you want.

- Michael

And here is the finished tea set. Exported from MoI as .fbx with n-gons, and imported into Maya to render with Vray for Maya (private beta).

Very design!
Put it in the Gallery!
http://moi3d.com/gallery/

>It's an interesting idea... But visually different colors for the same kind of state (being "selected")
>kind of makes for a confusing situation initially for someone just learning the software. They wouldn't know
> what the colors meant, and might think that it meant that one thing was not "really selected" or something.

>It is kind of good to have just one consistent color to indicate selection, that way there is no confusion
> about whether something is selected or not, it is all consistent.

Hi, Michael

Not quite what I meant. I meant that curves highlight differently from edges when you mouse over, BEFORE they are selected. They are in a highlighted state. So edges, surfaces, curves have a different highlight. When the thing is selected it goes into the selected state. The problem Phr0stByte had was knowing which thing to click on. At the moment you don't know.

> kind of makes for a confusing situation initially for someone just learning the software.

Well, it's confusing now, not only for new users but also for people who know how to use MoI. You don't know what it is until you have selected it. Edges and curves are different but they look the same. New users get confused. As you said, this is a big 'gotcha'.



Having said all that it just occurred to me - the problem is that you can't tell a curve from an edge. Wouldn't it be even easier to see them, if curves were a different colour from edges all the time? :-)

Hi Tony,

> Wouldn't it be even easier to see them, if curves were a different
> colour from edges all the time? :-)

I'm not sure.... But possibly not - it may make for a pretty messy display since the problem tends to occur when the curve and the edge are exactly occupying the same spot.

So either it would be speckled there, or one would "win" and you wouldn't know that there was a stacked up one behind the other one.

I don't think that colors will likely solve the problem, there just is not any particular color that would make someone say "oh, ok - I know that is an edge". It's not like there is an internationally recognized "edge" color like there is for go or stop for example...

I think probably getting some text to pop up when there is this stacked-up situation will probably have the best chance of clearing this issue up.

- Michael

>> I think probably getting some text to pop up when there is this stacked-up situation will probably have the best chance of clearing this issue up.

Yes, this sounds like a good idea.

I've learned to move the construction curves out the way, especially if they were derived from existing objects. Then hide them. I have a 'hide all curves' icon that I use a lot for that.

Well in Rhino, this was solved by popping up a context menu that allows you to select the item you want when there are overlapping objects - why not do similar?

-Will

Hi Will -

> Well in Rhino, this was solved by popping up a context menu
> that allows you to select the item you want when there are
> overlapping objects - why not do similar?

Yeah, that's how I set up Rhino, but I have come to view that kind of "in your face big pop-up" type thing to have been a bad UI design choice. It is just too distracting to have it pop up all the time, it tends to come up unexpectedly and interrupts your workflow constantly.

It was a major goal for MoI to avoid that - it is one of the ingredients that makes for such a smoother workflow in MoI. It basically kind of attempts to do the complete opposite and show you what will happen before you click rather than doing something after you click.


I'm thinking of possibly doing it though for this one particular case of stacked curve/edge, but I'm not completely enthusiastic about it because I don't want to incur the same kind of workflow interruption penalty.

- Michael

In my opinion, things are just fine as is - I just did not initially see it. Once you know it's there, all is good in the world...

>Yeah, that's how I set up Rhino, but I have come to view that kind of "in your face big pop-up" type thing
>to have been a bad UI design choice. It is just too distracting to have it pop up all the time, it tends to
>come up unexpectedly and interrupts your workflow constantly.

I can appreciate the reasoning and yes, it did pop up - a lot!

I'm trying to think of what would be kool for MOI, dunno, short of some Flash(y) roll out kinda selection thingy (in other words a context menu LOL...)

I tend to agree however along the thoughts of perhaps there should be some kind of indication (color or otherwise) between edges and curves.

This is separate from the problem of trying to see the two on top of each other (e.g. yellow + pink (edges) == orange?..)

Actually for me, I think the curve should dominate between the two. Of course a setting "Dominate Edges / Curves" could let one pick which entity (color) would be displayed if the two overlapped...

Of course I'm a fan of small font "breadcrumb" links on my Joomla pages - perhaps when the cursor is overlapping multiple entities, a breadcrumb list can appear either in the GUI or next to the cursor (closedcrv | opencrv1 | opencrv2| srfedge...) which when clicked would make the selection.

Admittedly if it's too long from a bunch of overlaps it'll get ugly fast unless it's fixed length and scrolls left & right as the cursor moves along it...

-Will

>Yeah, that's how I set up Rhino, but I have come to view that kind of "in your face big pop-up" type thing to have been a bad UI design choice. It is just too distracting to have it pop up all the time, it tends to come up unexpectedly and interrupts your workflow constantly.

In maya you can turn off the ability to select certain surfaces by just clicking an icon - maybe moi could have something similar, like a shortcut key that toggles nurbs curve selection and displays it as a text message in the viewport for a few seconds like: "nurbs curves selection: OFF" or something like that.. that way it wouldnt be in the way/clutter moi's interface.