Hi Brian, I know it's tough, sorry! ;)

The tricky part is that there are other priorities for the UI as well, for example to work well on many different resolution screens (not only just Brian's screen), and to be able to function well without forcing the need to scroll the UI up or down.

Having a panel where you sometimes need to do one click on a tab to activate a different palette is a whole lot better workflow than trying to scroll a big UI container up and down to find the right UI.

If MoI was designed to only run on just your monitor's resolution and not on any others, then it would be easier for me to have done some different things with the design and probably I would have separated things out by default (at least somewhat) more like you are talking about.

But I'm sorry - it is important for MoI to work well on a broader range of monitors, not only focused just on yours only! :)

The other thing you can do is edit the UI definition files - these are HTML files that are inside the \ui subfolder under MoI's main installation folder. These files control all the UI so if you edit them you can change the UI. If you really can't wait until v3 or v4 then that is an alternate way to get what you want right now.

- Michael

Maybe a survey of people who might, nowadays, use MoI on, less than , 17in Monitors?

Brian
NRN

Hi Brian,

> Maybe a survey of people who might, nowadays, use MoI on, less than , 17in Monitors?

I guess that would include nearly all laptop users?

It's pretty hard to get accurate information in a survey. To get accurate information I would probably need to do something like build a reporting mechanism into MoI so it could automatically send data about machine configuration back to me, but a lot of people seem to not like having those kinds of reporting mechanisms in their software though.

- Michael

People who use MoI on less than a 15inch screens then?

The problem is, only, in modifying, very slightly, the size of the icons!--refer back to the earlier example I produced where it was done (roughly)

Brian

When you are convinced --make your point--I was taught that--also!

"Having a panel where you sometimes need to do one click on a tab to activate a different palette is a whole lot better workflow than trying to scroll a big UI container up and down to find the right UI."

I would agree with this, its frustrating for me with other applications to have to scroll up and down palettes to see what is in them, seems kind of self defeating and disorientates the palette space.

The answer is to make a work space that is customizable, Sketchup is a very very good example of this, but I would agree that other things should have a higher priority, groups and layers for example!

I have the impression that you dont want to use right click menus but I think they will be almost essential to keep the organisation of palettes simple, no?


my demo runs out in a few days but I will be buying a copy very soon.

Hi Brian,

> People who use MoI on less than a 15inch screens then?

Again, many laptops have smaller than 15 inch screens.

For example just a very quick survey of new DELL laptops here - I count 5 out of 11 models on that page have a screen of less than 15 inches in size.

Actually smaller sized laptops are currently one of the most popular types.


re: Icon size - you can actually change the size of the icons without tweaking the UI files, for that go to Options / General and use the UI size slider to scale the UI to your preference.

- Michael

Hi Paul,

> The answer is to make a work space that is customizable,
> Sketchup is a very very good example of this, but I would
> agree that other things should have a higher priority, groups
> and layers for example!

Yeah easier customization would definitely help with that.

But it tends to be a difficult area to implement especially when the UI is different than the kind of "standard toolbar UI".

Early on in MoI's development I had to make a decision whether to spend a lot of time working on UI drag/drop type customization, or instead to work on developing just a single UI that was as good as I could make it, and I chose the latter. I would definitely make the same decision again. If I had forever to develop it, it would have been possible to do both, but my time is limited so I have to be careful which big projects I undertake. Now that the UI is really well defined it will probably help to make it more feasible to do a more targeted type of customization than it would have been trying to focus on customization earlier in MoI's lifetime.

Customization actually tends to be an area used by a fairly smallish number of users. For example in Microsoft Office, after gathering a substantial amount of data on how people use Office, they found out that less than 2% of Office sessions ran with any kind of customized UI:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx
That's one reason that made it possible for them to shift to a much different UI model in Office 2007 which actually has a lot in common with MoI, including actually losing a lot of customization type functions.


> I have the impression that you dont want to use right
> click menus but I think they will be almost essential to
> keep the organisation of palettes simple, no?

I think that I will be adding some right-clicks in some strategic areas for advanced commands. But it tends to make things pretty hidden so I try to avoid it a lot for basic functions.

In the future as I add more functions the plan is to mainly add new palettes, but that will be collapsed by default. To see what this will look like you can actually collapse a palette currently by clicking on its tab again after it is already active.

So there will be tabs like "Render", "Dim", "Analyze", etc... below the current palettes but with them being collapsed by default they won't add hardly any complexity to the top level UI.

- Michael

"re: Icon size - you can actually change the size of the icons without tweaking the UI files, for that go to Options / General and use the UI size slider to scale the UI to your preference."

I did not know that one was there! WOW!

And you say that having those parts separated so that they can be open at the same time-- is "difficult"?

Maybe I am missing something. (Running around in circles?)

Brian

Hi Brian,

> And you say that having those parts separated so that
> they can be open at the same time-- is "difficult"?

Yes - because separating them would cause problems for people on smaller screens, the separated UI would be larger than their screen and force a scroll bar to appear.

Sorry I wasn't clear - the hard part is not just doing it, the hard part would be avoiding the bad consequences and negative side effects from doing it.

So to do it properly would really need a kind of customization mechanism, like making it so you could grab a tab and drag it around to place it where you wanted.

Then there would be a default setup the same as the current one that worked well across many different sized screens, but if someone had a larger screen like you do, then they could more easily change the UI to suit it.

But that will require a lot of work to make that kind of system, I don't think that I will be able to get to that anytime too soon.

- Michael

Sorry Michael

Is this, really, too hard an add on option, using that other option you just gave
me before--- thats in the app?

Brian
No need to reply.

Hi Brian,

> Is this, really, too hard an add on option, using that
> other option you just gave me before--- thats in the app?

You mention "using that other option you just gave me before" - are you talking about the UI size option here? What you show there is something totally different than changing the size of things, so no those are not really connected in any fashion.


What you show there a big re-organization of the UI, things belonging to different groups and sections, etc... - that kind of major re-organization is not particularly easy to do with a checkbox type option if that is what you were asking about?


Once V2 is complete probably someone will cook up a customized UI with that kind of thing in it, just like is available for v1 already. But it is pretty hard to do that currently with v2 when other changes are happening for each beta release.


If you want to change the current beta, it is actually possible to set it up the way you show there if you edit the UI files under the \ui subfolder inside of MoI's main installation folder. Look for the sidepane.htm file, when you open that up in notepad, you will see various tags such as <moi:PaletteBody> <moi:CommandButton> , etc... - if you re-arrange the structure of these in that file it will also re-arrang the structure of the UI, I mean the UI comes directly from that file.

- Michael

Ok Michael.

That latter part is all double dutch to me.
Scripting stuff--if thats what it is---is not in the realm of the majority of 3D users to whom I promote MoI I would think either.

Why, with all the apps I have and use, would I need to learn this---all of a sudden?

Another world!
Sorry, don't waste your time.

Brian

Hi Brian,

> Why, with all the apps I have and use, would
> I need to learn this---all of a sudden?

Well, you wanted this to be a really high priority - if it is that big of a priority to you that is the way that you could make it happen right now.

Otherwise maybe after v2 is complete someone will do a different UI pack for it.

I wish I had enough time to make all features that everyone wants all be at the same priority and all happen at the same time, but I'm sorry I just have not been able to make that happen.

- Michael

Very cool model

DannyT,

On behalf of Grendel, I can answer since I too work in the field.

Generally, bare stainless to ocean will be 316, 17-4, or 2205 duplex. Differences in grades particularly with 17-4 and duplex, and usually with 316 you would find 316L because the L designates a low carbon content for improved weldability. However reduced carbon can reduce strength but increase ductility/charpy characteristics.

Thanks Jason for the help, missed that. Answered part of the question but not the other ;P)

Thanks for that answer Jason, actually forgot that I asked it so no sweat Grendel :)
The reason I asked then is that we use a lot of stainless in the line of work we do but we use Martensitic stainless steels mostly 420 series, machined then hardened to about 48 Rc, the problem lately is that we've had a few failures and we discovered it is due to intergranular corrosion.

Have any of you guys, Jason, Gredel, experienced this with the products you guys design being under the ocean and exposed to the salt.

Cheers

It's been a few years for me but a Marine Construction company I used to work for did a job where we had installed a fuel line under a pier using stainless hangers. The steel was speced out properly but there was something with 'WHERE" we got it that was the issue. Supposed to be the saltwater grade stuff and started corroding before we were done hanging it! Produced in a country where the spec stamp was penciled in I guess. Those company purchasing agents can make or break the best builders!

Nice looking details on the connector.

DannyT I have not used that material in any of our components. We stick with the 316 and Duplex for just about everything.