Hi PaQ,

> If I draw a sphere, hide the faces, I can't select the edge
> from this sphere anymore. However if I select the sphere before
> hidding the faces, then I can select/edit the edge as I expected.

Yeah, this is actually kind of an old problem - you should be able to reproduce the same thing in the earlier releases by selecting all faces (select one face then Ctrl+A, this would be on an object made up of more than one face not a single-face object like a sphere) and hiding.

Basically behind the scenes picking currently only relies on targeting faces to make the initial "whole object selection", and edges are only targeted after you have a whole object selection in place.

Of course now it is a whole lot easier to do something like hide all faces with one click, so it will probably be more of an issue now.

I think it should be possible for me to fix it up, but it is a somewhat finicky area to mess with, that's why I've kind of avoided dealing with it up to now.

- Michael

I tried the reset button. Things get even more worse.

If no IE is open ctrl klick on every button opens it. If IE is open nothing happens but if i ctrl doubleclick it works as expected for ctrl singleclick.

I just updated my laptop this morning to IE7 and XPSP3 to work in the garden (first sunny weekend for months). So if no one can reproduce this behaviour its my laptop and you dont have to worry about.

Michael

Hi PaQ, also a quick question - is the way that the Types show their status making sense to you?

You've probably noticed that some things are interconnected.

Like if you hide faces but not edges like you were describing, then Solids will show as that half eye "mixed status", since it has some of its sub-objects shown and some hidden.

Let me know if anything seems odd in how that part works.


The "Selected" sub-section is slightly odd to just play around with, because as soon as something is hidden it also gets deselected, so it then that section gets grayed out since there are no longer any objects that fit inside of it. But that seems to be working as it should, it is just something that is more useful for a particular targeted purpose and not just experimental clicking on.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I see you already have a barrage of questions.
I think I'll work on a project and follow the thread to get my head around this first, see how I'll use it because at first glance it looks like a highly flexible system, from basic use to advanced organisation.
Good job, thanks.

-

Hi Michael, I did a bit of poking around and it appears that there is some kind of nVidia utility program that has been sometimes known to cause similar problems in other places with Ctrl+click.

Does your laptop have an nVidia video card?

If so, you may want to give this a try - there is a utility program called nwiz.exe that may be running at startup, you can use Start/Run/msconfig , look in the startup section to disable it temporarily and reboot, see if that makes it go away.

Another one I saw mentioned is: "rundll32.exe nview.dll,nViewLoadHook" - if you see that in the startup section of msconfig, try disabling that one too and reboot.

Those are probably worth a try.

- Michael

hi Michael,
thanks, disabling the nvidea desktop utility did the job

sunny day
Michael

Thanks Danny! Yes that would be great to hear about how it feels in use.

Some basic quick tips and overview:

If you have a particular object you want to refer back to later on, you can give it a name and then it will show up under the Objects section. You can also assign the same name to several objects and then they will all be controlled by that one name entry.

If you want to do stuff that targets particular types of objects, like "Select all curves", "Hide all solids", things along those lines, then the Types section is where you want to go for those.

You can use Styles if you want to do organization by using colors, also I plan to make style assignments become material assignments in exported polygon files but that part is not quite ready yet.


So basic stuff right now is assign an object a name or a style and then you can manipulate it with the browser.

 

Then the way that the actions work, is that you can click on the eye to switch an item to be hidden or showing.

You can right-click on an eye to "isolate" that item which makes it the only shown thing and isolates all others. If you right-click on an isolated item it will un-isolate it and show everything.

You can click on the text part of an item to select it - left click selects it, ctrl+left click deselects it, right-click does an "isolate select" (makes it the only selected item), and ctrl+right-click does an "isolate deselect" (makes it the only deselected item, with everything else selected).

If you have a sequence of eyes that you want to all set on or off, you can hold the mouse button down and swipe over them.


Let's see what else - in Styles you can also click on the swatches to do some stuff - if you have a selection then left click on a swatch will assign the selection to that style (can also be done if the browser is hidden by the new Style entry in the properties panel), if you right click or left-click with no selection on the swatch it will set the active style to be that one. That's the one that will be used for drawing new objects it is the one that is marked with an outline around the outside of it.

If the text of an item is grayed out it means that there are not currently any objects that fall in that category.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> thanks, disabling the nvidea desktop utility did the job

That's great news! I'm glad that is resolved, it seemed pretty mysterious...

- Michael

Hi Danny, the other thing that I should mention that may be a little different than what you are used to is that these states are not persisting "modes".

The eyes will show you the status of all objects that belong to that slot, like if all objects are shown, if all are hidden, or if there is a mixture (with the half-eye).

But for example if you go to Styles and do a hide on Style=Red, you will hide all currently existing objects that are assigned Style=Red. But that does not mean that "Red is permanently off from now on no matter what", like if you were to draw a brand new object and give it a style of red, it would be visible and that Red status would switch to be mixed since there are now some visible and some hidden red objects.

This is kind of different than how layers usually work, so I wanted to give you a kind of heads up.

It will be good to hear how it works in practice - the general idea is that by avoiding that kind of "persistent on/off mode" and relying more on "batch actions" instead, it makes it possible to have some more flexibility and have several different kinds of batch categories that you can pick and choose between.

But it would be good to know if you miss some behavior from the "persistent on/off mode" kind of way of working.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

great to see the new beta, this will help a lot with bigger projects.
I have a couple of questions:

-Will there be options for the export, so that we can choose whether the OBJ groups will be defined according to Moi's object names, groups or styles? (I am assuming so). Right now I noticed that the import does not keep the hierarchy structure, but I am assuming this is a work in progress.

-Is there a way to change the default styles' colours and names?
This would be very useful.


Good work once again,

Hi okapi, thanks - please let me know how it feels as you get a chance to mess with it some more.

> -Will there be options for the export, so that we can choose
> whether the OBJ groups will be defined according to Moi's
> object names, groups or styles? (I am assuming so).

Actually OBJ has a pretty good place to store each of these different things...

There is a way to label an "object" in OBJ by using the "o" directive, I was thinking that object names in MoI would map to that.

There is a way to specify group membership by using the "g" directive, so probably groups in MoI would map to that, although that one is not quite exact since OBJ groups cannot have hierarchy like with a group containing another group.

There there is a way in OBJ to specify materials, which is what I was planning on mapping styles to.

So basically I think there will likely be a pretty natural matchup for how to store these things. Do you think you would need a way to force it to work with a different matchup?


> Right now I noticed that the import does not keep the hierarchy
> structure, but I am assuming this is a work in progress.

Could you maybe describe a little more about what kind of import you are referring to?

Import of 3DM files should actually be keeping styles intact.


> -Is there a way to change the default styles' colours and names?

For this one, set up one file the way that you want (to get to the edit styles dialog you currently need to select an object, then go to the properties panel and click on the style entry, then pick "Edit styles" from the flyout), then save that off as a .3DM file and specify that file as the startup template under Options / General / Template file.

You can use that template file mechansim to set up whatever default model you want to be loaded when MoI starts (or when you do File/New), and any styles in the template will replace the defaults.

- Michael

Hi Michael,
No doubt I'll have a few questions after I get into it.

Re: persistent on/off mode, the system at work NX, doesn't follow that style exactly it is a bit more flexible than that, like, you have your traditional layers as such, but then you can have named categories/groups where you assign layers to, then the style and object type control is handled by filters, but unlike MoI there are more mouse clicks involved, it seems you have all this system nicely packaged in one area instead of having different popups to control object organisation, the thing is I always believe humans adapt very well and when you use something for a while it becomes second nature and then you don't really notice the actions it takes to do the task, it just happens, but now that you've implemented the object organisational stuff in MoI and the way you've set it out, no doubt I will notice the difference.

Oh no! maybe I'm going to like the MoI system so much that it's going to make it frustrating using NX, then I won't be able to handle it any more, then I'll quit work and stay home and just use MoI, but then no money will be coming in! then the wife will leave me and take everything and I'll end up on the streets like a bum! OMG!! what have you done Michael!!
:)


No problem, I'll let you know if I miss some behavior, it won't be right away though.

Cheers

Michael
This version is not working cleanly--and my system has not changed. Wierd things happen simply as the mouse traverses between places---- and etc.
I hope the fixes are only a few days away.

Nothing todate that I see that improves on the last version, for me, though presumably there are a lot of sundry finnessed better workings that will be detailed in your list.

Brian

Hello Michael!

I am absolutely satisfied! Great features, go on :) and thanks for your unbroken enthusiasm.

> Right now I noticed that the import does not keep the hierarchy
> structure, but I am assuming this is a work in progress.
>>Could you maybe describe a little more about what kind of import you are referring to?
>>Import of 3DM files should actually be keeping styles intact.

sorry, I meant importing the OBJ in another 3d app....
I have not tried yet the import of 3dm with layers into MOI.



The mapping systems you describe seem very good, I'll wait to test them out and see how they work.

Hooray, Rhino layers are preserved! Nice!!!

Couple of notes:

*Object name does not transfer to/from Rhino

*How about being able to right click on a 'Style' in the 'Browser' and edit its name or color?

And once again, Hooray! :)

Looks very functional and quite extensive for a new feature!

Marc

V2 Object Export to HyperShot.

I created a solid cylinder using the Draw Solid tool. Then assigned each end cap, and the cylinder a different object name and a different color. The hide/unhide eyes work as expected to isolate each of the three surfaces. I selected all and saved as OBJ.

When I opened in Hypershot, I can't assign a different material to each surface. However, after running seperateobj.exe on the obj file, I can.

Am I doing something wrong?

Ed
Seattle, WA

Hi Brian, thanks for testing this new release!

> This version is not working cleanly--and my system has
> not changed. Wierd things happen simply as the mouse
> traverses between places---- and etc.

Hmmm, so far I haven't heard about this from anyone else.

I'll need a bit more precise description on what is happening, I just don't know what "weird things" means exactly.

Is it that you see objects far away from your mouse get selection highlights?

If so, then that is something that can happen with certain video drivers if you have set anti-aliasing to be turned on for all applications in the driver settings. If you have recently adjusted that setting, please try switching it back to "application controlled" and that may solve your problem.

Otherwise, can you please give a previous version a try (either the previous beta or v1) to see if you run into the same problem there or not?


> I hope the fixes are only a few days away.

I can't really make a fix if I don't know what the problem is.

Hopefully if you can provide a description of the problem, or if I get some more bug reports of it from other users, that may clarify it and help me to track it down.

- Michael

Hi Andras,

> I am absolutely satisfied! Great features, go on :) and
> thanks for your unbroken enthusiasm.

Thanks! :)

I still have a bunch of things to tune up with these new functions, but the basic functions are working well enough that I wanted to get it out there so people could make use of them.

- Michael