Hi Kevin - I think I understand what you mean.

But in MoI the Top, Front, and Right views are always set up to be a "plan" view of the grid that they are working on.

That grid can either be the world grid or the cplane grid (if you check "apply to all views" when setting the cplane) but there isn't any way to get a Top view with a non-plan (like slanted) view of the grid like it would be if the Top view remained world aligned but used the slanted Cplane for its grid.

Having the Top/Front/Right views always be a plan view kind of simplifes the UI and avoids problem areas like getting a degenerate edge-on view of a grid which could otherwise happen pretty easily if they did not stay plan.

It might be possible for me to expose a script method that would allow the Top view plane to be slanted, I'll give it a try and see.


Currently though there is another way you can get what you want here which is to use the 3D view instead.

If you go to Options / View, and set 3D view projection: Parallel , and then go to Options / View / 3D view angles and set all the view angles to 0, that will set up the 3D view to be the same as the Top view, except it does not re-orient when you change the CPlane, so that would allow you to draw on the slanted cplane from the same view as the Top view. I believe this will get the job done right now and it should be possible to set up a keyboard shortcut that will set the projection and angles with one keystroke, let me know if you want me to make up a script macro for that.

- Michael

Hi Kevin, actually here is the script:

script:var vp = moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D'); if ( vp.projection == 'Parallel' ) { vp.projection = 'Perspective'; vp.setAngles( 65, 25, 0 ); } else { vp.projection = 'Parallel'; vp.setAngles( 0, 0, 0 ); }


Set that up on a shortcut key by going to Options / Shortcut keys, and add in a new entry. Put in whatever you want for the key, and paste in the above for the Command part.

Then when you hit that key, the 3D view will change to become the same view as the world "Top" view, regardless of what kind of CPlane you have. So if you have an angled CPlane you can then draw on the angled plane there while still having the world top view of the scene like I think you want.

Then when you are done, hit the same key again and the 3D view will flip back to the regular perspective view.

I think that will get the job done for you right now.

But I will take a look at seeing if I can add a script method to let the Top view's grid get angled to become non-plan, that would probably be easier.

- Michael

Michael thankyou very much for your help. Script looks useful except that sometimes I also need to draw objects on the cplane in the front or side view also (not always top)


Maybe this request could be a checkbox option in cplane tool in the final V2 or next beta as I find I need to do this all the time when modelling stuff that is at odd angles over blueprints. While the cplane is a fantastic addition to the toolset, the ability to draw on it without affecting the orientation of your blueprints would make the tool perfect.

Hi Kevin,

> except that sometimes I also need to draw objects on the cplane
> in the front or side view also (not always top)

For the moment for getting the job done in the current release you can use some different scripts for doing the Front or Right-side views.

For Front use this one:

script:var vp = moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D'); if ( vp.projection == 'Parallel' ) { vp.projection = 'Perspective'; vp.setAngles( 65, 25, 0 ); } else { vp.projection = 'Parallel'; vp.setAngles( 90, 0, 0 ); }

For the Right-side view, use this one:

script:var vp = moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.getViewport('3D'); if ( vp.projection == 'Parallel' ) { vp.projection = 'Perspective'; vp.setAngles( 65, 25, 0 ); } else { vp.projection = 'Parallel'; vp.setAngles( 90, 90, 0 ); }


I know that is not ideal since you will have 3 keys and you will need to remember which one to use for a particular view, but at least it will let you get the result currently.


> Maybe this request could be a checkbox option in cplane tool
> in the final V2 or next beta as I find I need to do this all the
> time when modelling stuff that is at odd angles over blueprints.

Yeah it seems like something for that is necessary.

So I guess the way that you're talking about there would be a second checkbox called something like "Orient ortho views" that would be under "Apply to all views". It would be checked by default but you could uncheck it for the task that you are talking about here.

I guess the big question that I have is about degenerate "edge-on" views.

Say you unchecked that option and then set a cplane to a 6 degree angle in the Top view like you were talking about.

What would you expect to happen now in the Front and Right-side views? If I literally use that same exact plane you would be looking at it exactly from the edge which is not a good situation, it basically means you can't pick points with the mouse there.

Do you think I should set those ones up to have their standard World-oriented planes if they would otherwise be viewing the cplane edge-on? Or maybe should all views keep their regular world grids unless they are looking right downwards on the new grid (angled or not)?

I'm not quite sure what to do with the other views in this scenario.

- Michael

Hi Michael

Thanks for the extra scripts they will be quite useful to me. I'll probably call them CT CR & CF. Cplane top, cplane right, cplane front etc.

>Say you unchecked that option and then set a cplane to a 6 degree angle
>in the Top view like you were talking about.
>What would you expect to happen now in the Front and Right-side views?

I think having an option to orientate your views to cplane (current V2 beta) or world coordinates is the go. What I mean by that is give the user the option to leave all the views in world coordinate view but still be able to draw on the cplane. The user would then pick the viewport which is closest to the orientation of the cplane and draw in that viewport. From a modellors point of view who uses blueprints as reference this would be an invaluable option. The user could then toggle the cplane between the two modes (cplane view and world coordinate view) to suit but would always be drawing their objects on the cplane.

Hi Kevin - the tricky part is that you can't always draw on a single plane from every angled view.... Specifically if you've got a view that is looking exactly at the edge of a plane.

Here's an example to clarify:



In that example I've set up a plane which can be drawn on in the Top view, however if the Front and Right views used the grid in exactly the same 3D orientation as that plane, you can see that they are looking directly at the edge of it and cannot draw on it.

If I were to place the exact same cplane as the grid on every single view and not modify the view, it would end up with the grids on the Front and Right views all collapsed down to a line same as you see for this regular plane object....

That's kind of the situation that I'd like to avoid.

So I've got to try and figure out what should happen to the Front and Right views when this kind of mode is activated.

Are you saying that it doesn't bother you to have those other views become edge-on degenerate views when you would set this "don't change ortho views" type mode?


The part that works well right now is that not only do the views change to be relative, but also each ortho view gets a different oriented drawing plane so for example the Front view gets a grid that uses the X and Z axes of the primary construction plane, not the X and Y axes that the Top view uses. If there was no connection between the view orientations and the cplane as you want to have an option for, I'm not sure that doing that kind of axis flipping for each view's local grid would make sense to do...


- Michael

>Are you saying that it doesn't bother you to have those other views
>become edge-on degenerate views when you would set this "don't change ortho views" type mode?

Yes.

The edge on views become useful reference when you extrude the object you have drawn on the cplane.

Hi Kevin,

> The edge on views become useful reference when you extrude
> the object you have drawn on the cplane.

Yeah they can be useful for viewing results, but you won't be able to draw things with the mouse in them when they are looking edge-on at their grid.

What if I switched those views that would get an edge-on grid to have their regular default planes instead of the edge-on one? Would that cause any problems for the kind of use that you are talking about?

- Michael

>What if I switched those views that would get an edge-on grid to have their
>regular default planes instead of the edge-on one?
>Would that cause any problems for the kind of use that you are talking about?

Nah, that would be alright.

The main requirement I'm talking about is the ability to draw on the cplane without affecting the orientation of the blueprints underneath.

Hi Kevin, I'll see if I can set that up...

Does another checkbox that says: "Orient ortho views" make sense?

It would show up if "Apply to all views" was checked. Default will be for it to be checked which would give the same as current behavior (where the ortho views move to be looking relative to the new cplane) - if you uncheck it then the ortho views would stay oriented in world to get the type of thing that you want here.

- Michael

Hi Michael,


Could you add a "Project to Cplane" option?. The views could be to user Cplane, but curves drawn in the ortho views projected to the relative world planes.



- Steve

Michael

>Does another checkbox that says: "Orient ortho views" make sense?

Yep, I think users will understand this.

Manz
>The views could be to user Cplane, but curves drawn in the ortho views projected to the relative world planes.
Thats how it currently works ?

Hi Steve - sorry I'm not following that, could you describe it a bit more?

Maybe what you are talking about would be if the 2 checkboxes were always visible (instead of the second one disappearing when you unchecked the first one), and you disabled "Apply to all views" (so the grids in ortho views stayed as their default world planes), but enabled "Orient ortho views" so that the view directions do shift to be relative to the custom cplane?

If you could describe a bit about the scenario where that would help out, that might help me understand it better.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I was thinking of the "ProjectOsnap" in Rhino, but a little more simplified. As example. A drawing can be set up on a custom Cplane with "apply to all views", with an option to "project", then, rather than the curves being drawn on the user Cplane, they are projected to the world plane.


- Steve

Hi Steve,

> then, rather than the curves being drawn on the user
> Cplane, they are projected to the world plane.

I'm not sure which world plane they would project on to?

A user cplane is not restricted to be similar to the original world plane - they can easily be flipped around in some totally different direction. For example it would be possible for a relocated "Top" view to be looking down right at the edge of the normal "World Top" plane.

So it's not really clear to me how that would work...


The other part is that you seem to be talking about curves being projected - would that mean that a circle that was being drawn would instead project to an ellipse as the end result? If so then that is not something that can easily be set up by just changing how points are picked, the circle command for example only currently knows how to construct a circle, not an ellipse. So that would probably require changes to every command, making it a rather difficult amount of work I'm afraid.

- Michael

Steve

Couldn't you place a rectangular surface or similar object on the world plane as a temporary object. Draw you objects/curves on the cplane and then use the project curve tool ?