Hi Igor, one other note - if you'd like to change the way the tabs look, that is possible to do on your local copy by editing some PNG files that are in the \ui subfolder underneath MoI's main installation folder.

The images for those tabs are the ones named TabButtonBackground*.png .

There are a couple of different ones, for active/inactive left/center/right.

- Michael

Ribbon Ul uses vertical space when working space (monitors) tends to get more horizontal.

Marc

>> But there is certainly no doubt that the main concepts behind the ribbon are sound ideas, I mean the fundamental
>> one is that unless your program is trivial you just can't have all the program's UI showing simultaneously, there has
>> to be some way to switch chunks of it on or off.

That's what customizing toolbars was for. Didn't need a new fatter, less configurable thingy taking up more screen space.

>> Ribbon Ul uses vertical space when working space (monitors) tends to get more horizontal

Totally agree. MS seem to be loosing the plot with usability these days, IMHO. I feel a rant coming on so I'm quitting now.

Anyway even Bill isn't happy :-)

http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/25/2003-bill-gates-email-reveals-frustrations-with-windows-xp/

Hi Tony,

> That's what customizing toolbars was for. Didn't need a new
> fatter, less configurable thingy <...>

They actually gathered the numbers on this - out of all Office sessions that they recorded, only fewer than 2% had any customization in the toolbars.

Then of those 2%, 85% of those only had customization of four or fewer commands. (http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/06/27/648269.aspx).

So the vast vast majority of their user base did not use toolbar customization like that at all.


I was still very surprised that they had the guts to switch to a much less customizable system though, because even that small percentage is a pretty large number of people since the overall user base for Office is so large.


> taking up more screen space.

Apparently not for most people. A good overview here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/jensenh/archive/2006/04/17/577485.aspx


Anyway, it is a mixed bag, if you are in that percentage of people who liked to do heavy customziation then the new Office probably yanks away a lot of stuff that you relied on and therefore probably sucks for you. But it wasn't really feasible for them to hold the whole system "hostage" for only the needs of a small percentage. They consistently were finding that the top requested features were things that were already in there but that users could not find with the menu/toolbar system. That system was not originally designed to expand out to such a large number of things.


- Michael

Michael,

Just wanted to say thank you for being able to tweak color of the interface!!!

This openess is awsome!! Please keep it open! (this is one of the major factors why I wish to support your app in the forseeable future!!))

ps 1 and this is the color of interface (see below) I find myself much faster to orient in!

ps 2
As for the article on the ribbon - most comments followed were negative as a matter of fact..
The Ribbon marketing nowdays goes very much like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRtUv97YFco&feature=related
))

Regards
I

Hi Igor, I'm glad that having the UI open to alteration is working well for you!


> As for the article on the ribbon - most comments followed
> were negative as a matter of fact..

I wouldn't assume too much by that - it tends to be the nature of online comments that people with negative comments are the ones who will tend to go out of their way to post the most...

When things are going well, people often don't go out of their way to make special note that things are going smoothly. That's just kind of the nature of things.

But certainly the Ribbon is not right for everybody - any kind of a change at all can easily have the possibility of being disruptive, sometimes it doesn't matter if the new thing is actually better or not, just that it has changed can cause problems and force some time to be spent learning new habits. That's why I was very surprised that they had the guts to make that substantial change to Office.

But their previous system was not really working out to continue to append more and more and more toolbars, it had pretty much grown to a critical mass overload. They had to do some kind of reset if they wanted to make the overall feature set of Office more presentable.

Otherwise if they just continued to just add more and more stuff to the old system the problem of non-expert users not being able to find the functionality they needed would continue to get worse and worse, and that was already at a very bad level in Office 2003.

- Michael

I am one of that 2% (as you know by my MoI tweaks :-) )

The trouble with Microsoft is they are removing the choice. You could have toolbars or not. Or as I did make one with my most used items. I absolutely hate it when they do that. They makes things too complicated in the first place then kill off the good bits trying to fix it. Ooops there goes the baby with the bath water again. Better get another baby.

The other problem is that a lot of companies then follow the way MS does things thinking it is the 'best' way. I am forced to use Office at work and we are still on 2003. Not looking forward to the time when they give me the new one.


Michael, a big thanks from me for allowing us users to tweak the MoI UI to suit our needs!

Hi Tony,

> You could have toolbars or not.

Well, in _theory_ you could have toolbars or not, but in practice that adds a vast vast amount of work to have a complex system like Office with 2 completely different mechanisms to run it.

I know it is easy to assume that Microsoft has an unlimited number of resources and can do anything imaginable, but it does not really tend to work that way.

They probably just did not have enough available time or resources to have new functions in Office 2007 implemented with both an old toolbar system as well as the new ribbon system. The most likely breaking point would be just too many variables for the testing team to work with.

If they could have done it, it would certainly have solved the problem though.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I see people like us not moving beyond 2003 ))) Me and other users have actually posted about ribbon a lot in other forums but I got a little weary. actually I could direct you to some really interesting stuff where it is accurately proved (and all the points you made earlier on re the ribbon are taken into account) that the ribbon will greatly disrupt user database in some app and speaking frankly if MoI ended up with horisontal office like ribbon i'd never consider to buy it.. but so far your UI is close to perfect! (and not only UI!) and hopefuly will not be altered much in the future, just gaining power internally.. although obj brousing is something which I tend to think could be sorted out further.. Is there any possibility for html based ui to make something similar to Visual Studio sliding in and out panels? (here for styles and objects.. ?)

Another question.. re simplifying use of MoI..
In Sketchup we operate planar faces 80% of the time (due to our specifics) and find ourselves push-pulling 85% of the time.. Is there any possibility in the future to implement Sketchup like Push-pull for nurbs planar surfaces? (honesly i dream about it!!)) it greatly simlifies interaction with objects and especially simple boolean operations. I understand that MoI is all about nurbs and curves, but in real practice we use rectangular shapes a lot and interaction with them (not in SU) is still cumbersome and not as much straightforward as possible.. hopefully

Regards,
Igor

Uh Oh,
I feel the Moi vs. Sketchup timetrials coming on again! I think the last time it was:

Sketchup = 8-10 seconds
Moi= 3-4 seconds

What was that thread called?

Also Igor, you can get great benefit if you run the beta MoI. It is very stable (probably moreso than V1)
See the beginning of this thread.

fyi

Hi Igor,

> Is there any possibility for html based ui to make
> something similar to Visual Studio sliding in and out
> panels? (here for styles and objects.. ?)

Actually, it is already HTML based, for example you can see the HTML for the browser pane by opening up the file BrowserPane.htm which is in the \ui subfolder inside of a MoI v2 installation.

But the browser is not static UI, it is populated dynamically by data that is usually unique to the currently open file. This kind of thing often tends to be harder to make customizable - static UI is much more easily customized.

If you have some specific wishes for the browser, it would be great to hear them!

So far I think the one you mentioned is to remove Styles entirely? But like I mentioned previously that one just is not feasible since it would eliminate a lot of frequently requested functions especially related to data-interop with other programs - for example having materials set up when exporting to OBJ, and having layers set up when exporting to Rhino. These are highly requested functions so eliminating them would not be good for many users.

Also there is hardly any gain for removing styles even for people who don't want to use it - it only takes up a single line in the browser when collapsed, so if you don't want to use it just keep it collapsed and it will stay out of your way.


> In Sketchup we operate planar faces 80% of the time (due
> to our specifics) and find ourselves push-pulling 85% of the
> time.. Is there any possibility in the future to implement
> Sketchup like Push-pull for nurbs planar surfaces?

There is an easily accomplished equivalent in MoI currently which is to just use Extrude followed by a boolean.

Check out this previous post for an overview video of how to do SketchUp type things in MoI: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2215.7

Some of the new functions in MoI v2 are for drawing curves directly on to existing planar faces of an object which you'll see used there in the video quite a bit, that's a pretty key new thing in v2 that should give it a lot better feel to someone who is used to SketchUp.

The speed trial that Burr is talking about is in this other previous thread:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1978.1


> interaction with them (not in SU) is still cumbersome and
> not as much straightforward as possible.. hopefully

One thing to keep in mind is that the trial version is for v1 which is more than a year old... There are a lot of new functions already implemented in v2, including quite a few new things for drawing.

- Michael

Hi Igor, also check out here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/doc/V2releasenotes.html

for a collection of all the release notes on what is new in v2 so far.

- Michael

Michael, Thanks!

I actually awaiting studica for two days already and they haven't even started processing my request..

So as soon as they resolve my request I'll be able to explore beta 2

Hi Michael....

BTW, is there any info when the next beta will be release ?
Sorry, cant wait for it :)

Thanks

Hi Anis,

> BTW, is there any info when the next beta will be release ?

I'm not sure yet, but maybe next week.

- Michael

Hello Michael....

> I'm not sure yet, but maybe next week.
Wow, it will be very nice :).
I am also interested your next target --> surface modeling !

Thanks Sir !

Hi Anis,

> I am also interested your next target --> surface modeling !

The focus for the next one is on finishing (or almost finishing...) the object management tools, nothing new for surface modeling yet.

- Michael

Hi Michael!

I've found that there's a problem with the SAT exporter in MoI:

If I model a shape in MoI and that shape has curved surfaces in it - Revit cannot read curved surfaces! - (see attached pic - planar surfaces are ok at the same time - in the place of the sphere - just a hole!)

Rhino has an extensive SAT export dialog with some 10 options for SAT file version and i've checked all of them - and they work flawlessly!
(mean import whatever curves into revit as expected)

Autocad SAT export also works flawlessly!

What is most interesting - if I import autocad(rhino) sat file into MoI with one curved surface - everything reads in just fine,
then I save it as native Moi 3dm, then I add one more curved shape - then I export entire shape to SAT from MoI

when opening exported SAT file in Revit, the program reads curved part that was initially design in Autocad and the part that was added later by MoI - not! again - just a hole! (this is shown in the pic)

Please let me know if its possible to review SAT exporter, because it's kind of pose a serious problem for my intended workflow..

Thanks!
Igor

Hi Igor - does the problem happen with any kind of curved surface, or is the problem specific to spheres?

For example, does the attached file work ok or do you see a similar problem with it?

- Michael

I just imported testobject.sat into 2 other apps I have and it came in ok. You may want to look at revit settings?