Hi Eric, re: layers staying in place - yup that was a function I added in for MoI so that when you open up a .3dm file from Rhino, things that MoI does not understand or work on directly are still stored and written back to the file when you save out again.

I think that Flamingo materials may be a kind of special custom kind of material property instead of using the standard 3DM material table, stuff that is stored in custom plug-in attributes (called "userdata") is not persisted like this currently, only the standard 3DM info is persisted currently.

This area will change a bit later on here in MoI v2, since I'll be working on making things like layers have some kind of more direct counterpart in MoI than it does in v1.


> For notes and dimensions I will probably use PhotoShop
> unless I can find a simpler method.

What about the dimensions and text functions in Rhino? Is there something about them that does not work well for you?


> Michael, I did have some problems with 'array' adding
> duplicates (in exactly the same position ... so invisible)
> and in one case removing the source object

Please let me know if you can track this down to a repeatable example. If you can save off a file that you can send to me to repeat the problem over here it makes it a lot easier to fix it up.

- Michael

Michael

I doubt if many would consider, at the price and working complexity, for Rhino to be a companion app to MoI.

Not a good thing to think of Rhino as a "crutch" to MoI I suggest?

Brian

Hi Brian,

> I doubt if many would consider, at the price and working
> complexity, for Rhino to be a companion app to MoI.

I'm pretty sure that Eric has mentioned previously that he already is using Rhino in combination with MoI.


> Not a good thing to think of Rhino as a "crutch" to MoI I suggest?

In a perfect world no, but in the imperfect world that we live in where I haven't yet had time to jam 15 years worth of functions into MoI yet, it can currently be good to use them in combination to handle things that MoI does not do yet.

I wish that I could make MoI do every single function that all other software does all in MoI version 1.0! But please be aware that it takes quite a lot of work to make that happen, and unfortunately I haven't figured out how to get more than 24 hours of work accomplished in a single day! Let me know if you find a way around that! :)


If there is a solution to be found to someone's current problem using Rhino (or any other software) in combination with MoI to complete their current task, it will not be unusual for me to recommend that they use that other software to finish their task... I mean it's pretty straightforward really - I guess the other alternative would be for me to tell them that what they want to do is impossible and suggest no solution at all, is that what you are saying you would prefer for me to do?


If you are using it to do professional work rather than as a hobby, Rhino's price is very inexpensive (making MoI's ludicrously so of course).


And actually in this particular case I wasn't even recommending Rhino! I was asking because I was wondering if there was a problem with the dimensioning tools that Eric has available to him in Rhino, that would make him want to use Photoshop for this task instead of Rhino. If there is such a problem it would be great for me to understand it so that I could try to avoid it when I get a chance to work on this area in MoI.


- Michael

>re: layers staying in place - yup that was a function I added in for MoI so that when you open up a .3dm file from Rhino, things that MoI does not understand or work on directly are still stored and written back to the file when you save out again.

A-ha! So if its exactly the same going out as it was coming in, the objects props are preserved. I didnt know that. :-)

Hi Nick - yeah if you edit the object in MoI then you'll lose the layer assignment for that particular object. But otherwise ones that you don't edit in MoI should come through with their basic Rhino properties intact (but not plug-in properties such as Flamingo ones).

Also non-NURBS objects such as dimensions, mesh objects and spotlights should also get "round tripped".

- Michael

Hi Michael ...

Actually the dimension and text properties in Rhino are very good ... the only problem is in 3d perspective view ... the text and the leaders are displayed in 3d also, which distorts them so to have notes and text flat to the paper it requires a different approach.

I will check the many copies of that file with the array problem and forward it to you (assuming that I have copies that I have not edited to delete the duplications). The duplications only show up visually when the attempt is made to render the illustration.

And, yes, I have been a Rhino user for a long time and still use it for a large part of my work ... But I do like the intuitive feel of MoI and am using it more and more. MoI speeds up my production 3d work substantially but I certainly don't expect it to do ALL the Rhino stuff ... and if one has both programs anyway the flipping back and forth is a great asset. I so much appreciate MoI not messing up the layers set up for rendering in Rhino ... I look forward to the day when Flamingo materials stick, too ... though I am content if that never happens ... there are so many render plug-ins available I don't know how you would every get MoI to leave them all in place ... but then I am not a genius programmer :).

cheers,
eric

Hi Eric

you could try sketchup for notes and dimensions