Hi Michael, thanks for the great feedback!
> I have some difficulties with the repeat-command option. Is there a
> reason it is not available for every tool?
Here's the deal - on a lot of tools doing an immediate repeat wouldn't be very useful because you really want to be able to change the selection first before repeating. For instance if you have a curve selected and you do an extrude, if you repeated the extrude immediately you would be back extruding the exact same curve again, not really too useful. So the repeat checkbox is disabled for those types of commands where it just didn't seem useful to have it. It works well with the draw commands since those are very self-contained and don't depend on having any type of selection prior to running the command. There is probably some way to improve the situation with selection-based commands, like clear the selection so that you'll be prompted to select a new set of objects when it is repeated. I just haven't really had time to experiment with that yet, it is kind of troublesome because it means you would have to push "Done" after doing the next selection cycle which is a different workflow from the first time you executed the command because you didn't have to push "Done" after you made the initial selection before running it the first time.
> I also think it would be easier to use if the checkbox state would be
> remembered (either per tool or even globally) instead of being reset
> after each tool selection.
I guess it would be possible to do this, I just wanted to make it relatively easy to break out of the repeat cycle, which currently happens if you cancel the current command or start a different command, or uncheck the repeat box and then complete the current command normally.
Is there a particular scenario where you can envision wanting to use repeat on one command and then follow it by repeating a different command right away?
> I also find the repeat last command by enter/right mouse button like in
> rhino or autocad very efficient. Did you specifically opt against that
> behaviour for some reason?
No, not really specifically opted out, I've just been trying very hard not to rely on right clicks in general so I've just held off on it. I was hoping to find some better way to do it, but even if the repeat checkbox worked on everything it isn't really the same thing. So I guess I can add this in.
> Copy option for move, rotate, mirror tools
I should be able to do this for the next beta. I guess ctrl+click or ctrl+drag to drop a copy probably makes sense?
> - For 1d-scale, possibility to scale by factor 0 (to flatten geometry)
I've got this half-way working for the next beta (maybe by the end of the week) - but for now it only works properly when you do it in the world x, y, or z axis directions. I've put general direction zero-scale-flatten on my bug list to fix up a bit later.
> - It seems that some commands can be applied to multiple volumetric objects at
> once but not to multiple curves. E.g. fillet all corners in a polyline (all at once or single
> ones by selecting single edges.
Yeah, I plan to add fillet/chamfer of an entire polyline in eventually. I was thinking of postponing it until after V1 though, since the workaround of separating and filleting the pieces is not too terrible. I was thinking it might be nice to be able to select vertices of the polyline to fillet as well, in addition to edge by edge.
> it seems it would be logical if single edges in a polyline were selectable as they
> are in volume objects)
The thing is that it doesn't seem quite as generally useful as for volume objects - it just doesn't seem to come up that frequently outside of fillet/chamfer for curves. The drill-in selection just has a pretty significant workflow impact and it just doesn't seem to have enough of a pay-off for curves to have it behave like that by default. What I do want to eventually have is a type of selection filter control that you can set to change what your selection is targeting, it would have choice between something like Drill-in, Entire objects, faces, edges, curves, or curve segments. So you would be able to set the selection filter to curve segments and then be able to target those elements. But I don't think that I'm going to have the filter ready for V1 though.
> - Boolean commands work great on planar objects as well, but Diff doesn't
> seem to have the expected result here.
Yeah, booleans on just surfaces instead of enclosed solid objects doesn't work properly in a lot of cases right now, it needs some work. I've got it on my bug list.
> - How about an option checkbox to automatically fill closed 2d-curves
> with a planar object?
I've got some kind of a vague idea that there might be some kind of 2d illustration type curve properties eventuallly, like fill and stroke properties, and there would be some way to set the default properties for newly created objects and if you assigned it a fill then it would behave like you're describing. That's probably quite a ways out though. But I kind of want to wait on adding stuff like this until some kind of properties ideas gel a bit more.
> I noticed today that i can hide sub-objects as well, which is great to check
> the visual appearance of tangent surfaces by hiding the edges in-between.
I have some ideas about having some view controls that will let you globally change the display, like a checkbox to show isoparms, turn all edges off/non-tangent only, change from a matte to shiny object display, ... I'm thinking these controls will be available under the view tab, that's why there is a view tab with just one item in it, I'm thinking it will expand with this type of display control stuff in it. I'm not quite sure when this stuff will get done though, but possibly not too long.
> I was going to ask how to extract geometry from existing objects, then
> figured it out myself: Drill-in-select faces or edges, then copy.
Yup, you're getting the hang of it. This works for other things too, such as drill-in to select faces then you can use Separate to break out just those faces from a solid. Or delete just a face by drilling in to select it and then using delete. You're right this would be good to mention in the docs.
Having drill-in is pretty key for the whole UI structure, because having the ability to pre-select an edge or a face gives additional context to many commands. For instance the single Fillet button in MoI will fillet curves if you select 2 curves, do a surface/surface fillet if two separate surfaces are selected, or do a topology based fillet if you have edges, faces, or an entire solid selected. So that's 3 different operations (eventually 4 when polyline fillet is added) all being driven off of the same single button. Getting this type of increased potency per-UI element is one of the major things that has allowed MoI to become more streamlined.
Thanks again, it is really great to get this kind of in-depth feedback.
- Michael
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