Hi Burr,

> Does the vid card have any impact here.

Not particularly, except maybe in a kind of roundabout way.

One of the new things of the mesher is that it will display any objects that it has finished during the progress of the current meshing job, instead of only displaying the fully finished result only at the end like it used to.

If you have something really very old like your one Radeon 7200 card, then I guess it would be possible for that display part to take enough time to kind of steal the attention away from one of the CPU cores during the mesh calculation.

But if your video card is at all reasonable then it should not really be a factor.


Hopefully you are not initially setting up your new mega core box with that old Radeon 7200 , are you ?! :)

- Michael

Hi Tony,

> I didn't know about the vertex normals thing between
> Lightwave and modo as I only have modo.

Until very recently LightWave didn't support it, I think it is only supported in the newest LightWave release, I think version 9.5 ?

Unfortunately when they added support, it appears that they did not do it in a way that was compatible with Modo.

I can kind of understand how that happened because Modo implemented it in a somewhat strange way before that, where they expected the vertex normals to be in right-handed coordinates, while all the other coordinates in an .lwo file are in left-handed coordinates.

Anyway because of this kind of messed-up situation where each of them is expecting different kinds of coordinates for this same vertex normal data I have put in this switch in MoI.


> Which way did MoI do it before this update?

The Modo way, same as the new default.

So if you're using Modo you shouldn't need to mess with it.


- Michael

Hi Anis,

> What is parallel view ?

You were asking Danny, but I can give you an answer here - the parallel view is when you turn off perspective in the 3D viewport. It is also sometimes called an "orthographic" view. More details on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orthographic_projection_(geometry)

In MoI the option for this is under Options / View / 3D view projection: the choices are: Perspective or Parallel.

I'm pretty sure that you have used this before though, because didn't you like to set it up with the Parallel/orthographic type view to make it appear the same as SolidWorks?


> I am not clear about this :
> "Added some script functions to access the camera point from a script,

Basically if you set up a keyboard shortcut with the script given there, when you execute that script it will copy the camera and target point locations to the clipboard. You can then paste them into a text editor to see the camera and target locations and enter those into another application if you want to synchronize the views with another app exactly.

Previously there wasn't any way to extract this camera information.

- Michael

Michael
Just a few questions about the list of V2 updates.
(Sorry if they seem completly dumb!)

The only uni file I can find is in the V1 folder. I presume that is the one?
I note some odd files that have been added--highlighted with a red line--is it ok to delete them?

Now a couple of questions which may help to answer some others by default.

1.Added option for LWO export---
I can not see the default Modo setting there?
2. Updated Nurbs export----
Does one actually type one of those options into the uni?
3. There are new options------values for meshing
Is this relating to .obj saves? Seems the same as before to me?

Brian

Wow, some great numbers there, thanks for posting them everybody!

That's really funny that now the stage of writing a large data set to disk can actually take longer than the mesh calculation itself!

This used to be a pretty painfully slow area, so it is great to have it tuned up to be so much better now...

- Michael

Hi Brian!

> The only uni file I can find is in the V1 folder. I presume that is the one?

Yeah that will be the one.

By default the moi.ini file will be created in your "Application Data" folder which will be here:
C:\Documents and Settings\ [your login name] \Application Data\Moi\moi.ini

However, you can optionally move the moi.ini file to be in the same folder as MoI.exe if you like - it is not set up like that by default because someone who does not have administrator privileges on their machine cannot write data to the "Program files" folder.

But if you move moi.ini to be in the same folder as moi.exe then it will check for it there first and use it from there if it finds it, it sounds like you have moved the file over there at some point in the past.


> I note some odd files that have been added--highlighted
> with a red line--is it ok to delete them?

Yeah, those are just previous entries in your "Recent files" list - the list of your previously opened files that pops up when you open up the Files menu. You can delete them if you want but if you delete anything before the first blank one (the first one with nothing after the = sign) then it will clear out that list to be blank when you start out MoI the next time.

Those entries are not really doing anything bad though, is there some special reason why you want to remove them?


> 1.Added option for LWO export---
> I can not see the default Modo setting there?

It will get added automatically the first time that you do an LWO export. Otherwise if it is not added yet you can add it in manually if you wish.


> 2. Updated Nurbs export----
> Does one actually type one of those options into the uni?

If you want to control that option then yes - again these will get added in with their default values to the moi.ini the first time that you do an export to either SAT, STEP, or IGES formats.

But they are only really of use when importing those files into applications that require data to be structured in a certain special way, probably you won't have any use for them yourself.


> 3. There are new options------values for meshing
> Is this relating to .obj saves?

These new options can be used to control the default values that are used when you save to a mesh format, which includes .obj format.


> Seems the same as before to me?

Yup, that is how it is supposed to be - only if you change those values will you see a difference. For example if you find that every single time you exported a mesh you wished that the angle parameter was set to 6 degrees, you can set that up now by setting Angle=6 in those options.

With that set, then the angle will have a value of 6 when that meshing dialog is initially displayed in a session.

If you do not have a special value that you need all the time for the default, then this setting will not be of any use to you specifically.

- Michael

Thanks Michael
Should also answer the several unasked questions also.

Brian

Michael
Those "recent files" did not make sense!

I did another search and found the uni applicable to V2

"D:\Documents and Settings\Brian\Application Data\Moi"

Brian

1.5GB PCIe x16 nVidia Quadro FX 5600 :)

The 7200 goes to the trash, replaced with the dead box's "quadro2 pro"

Nomenclature for the "elderly"!

"Enabled making copies while in edit frame wheel mode, by holding down Ctrl before dragging the mouse."

I puzzled/experimented over this for ages and, hopefully, it means--

"New Shortcut to add to Shortcut key list

Ctrl -------- Allows drag copy of selected item"

Can I type this in on the MoI list or only on my desk printed version of the shortcuts list?

Brian

Hi Brian,

> Can I type this in on the MoI list or only on my desk printed version of the shortcuts list?

You don't have to, this is a new feature that goes with the edit frame, it's not a script where you have to assign a shortcut to.
Michael gives a basic run down on how it works here > http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2243.8


Cheers

Hey Brian,
It's not a new "Shortcut" key to add. It's functionallity in MoI's user interface that has been updated.

If you hold the cntrl key and click and drag ANYTHING, it will not move the object but move a new copy of the object. A quick "Copy and Paste" type thing.

Create a sphere, then ctrl+drag it somewhere! Presto!

What was being mentioned was that while in "Edit Frame-Wheel Rotate" Mode, THis functionallity wasnt working as expected and now it does again!.

Danny/Burr

I think that what you are referring to is more the next point in the list "Enable grabbing---etc------"? (Which is LOVELY!)

I read the previous one, that I was referring to, "enabled making copies----" , as being a more universal "shortcut " that (also) applied in the wheel mode?

Dont' get old!

Brian

Just to clarify.
I never knew that that Ctrl shortcut "copy" method applied in V1 (untill just now!)

It's not listed that I can find in any shortcut key list?

Is there another shortcut key list I should be aware of?

Help!

Brian

Hey Brian,

Ctrl+Shift+Click the "Options Icon"! :)

Hi Brian,

> I never knew that that Ctrl shortcut "copy" method
> applied in V1 (untill just now!)

Actually it looks like that particular thing may have been missing from the documentation! I will try to fix that up for the v2 docs when I get a chance to tune them up.

But using Ctrl to drop copies is actually also used in some other areas that are covered in the v1 documentation, like in the docs for the Transform/Rotate command, which says:

"You can check the "Make copies" button or hold down the Ctrl key when clicking the last point to drop rotated copies of the object."

It's also mentioned under Transform/Scale as well.


> Is there another shortcut key list I should be aware of?

This one is actually a mouse action + modifier key, which in MoI is categorized as a different type of action than a modifier key + keystroke, such as Ctrl+A for example.

Actions that are triggered by mouse actions do not show up in the Options / Shortcut keys list - that area only holds actions that are triggered fully by keystrokes and not mouse button clicking or dragging.

- Michael

Burr
Lost me--is that a Llama? (Did I need to know?)

Michael
"This one is actually a mouse action + modifier key, which in MoI is categorized as a different type of action than a modifier key + keystroke, such as Ctrl+A for example.

Actions that are triggered by mouse actions do not show up in the Options / Shortcut keys list - that area only holds actions that are triggered fully by keystrokes and not mouse button clicking or draggingl "

In every other app that I can think of, all options are listed in the main Shortcuts printouts.
With MoI there seem to be a lot of different "actions/proceedures/working principles" that seem at odds somewhat with those I have encountered elsewhere. And, in those areas, somewhat contrary to the basic beautiful principles of MoI workings.

Anyway, thanks for the efforts.

Brian

Hi Brian,

> In every other app that I can think of, all options
> are listed in the main Shortcuts printouts.

In the future I can probably try to cook up a kind of "cheat sheet" like that to improve the documentation. Actually there is the start of one on the Wiki here:
http://moi3d.com/wiki/Shortcut_Keys

But that will probably be something different than the Shortcut key editor which is under Options / Shortcut keys currently.

That particular Shortcut key editor is meant only for editing shortcut keys, it's not really a "printout" documentation page or a place to edit mouse actions. It's meant to be a place just to set up your own customized keystroke actions.

Maybe that is one possible area of confusion? I mean that it sounds like you are expecting the place in MoI where you can define your own custom shortcuts to instead be a documentation page?

- Michael

Hi Brian, I have updated that wiki page (http://moi3d.com/wiki/Shortcut_Keys) to also list the ways that you can use modifier keys with the mouse as well.

So that's now got a list of all the default shortcuts that ship with MoI, and also which keys do what when used with the mouse.

So I guess that is the kind of printout page that you were looking for?


But note that if you have defined a bunch of custom shortcut keys that are unique to your particular copy of MoI then those will not be listed there. If you want a printout of those, it may be a good idea to keep track of the ones that you add in your own text file somewhere.

- Michael

WOW!! Amazing Speedup for export!! Unbelievable!

Thanks!!

Ah, would be great to have ann print-option for the shortcut-table.