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

Hi okapi,

> sorry, I meant importing the OBJ in another 3d app....

Yeah that part is not functional yet.


> I have not tried yet the import of 3dm with layers into MOI.

This part should be working though, please let me know if you see any problems with this area.


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

One thing that can be tricky is that some programs will only read in some of these pieces of information from OBJ and not other pieces, so exactly how it will work will also depend on how your target program deals with OBJ as well.

But I think that object name and styles as material assignments are likely to be handled by quite a lot of receiving applications.

- Michael

Hi Nick,

> Hooray, Rhino layers are preserved! Nice!!!

Yup, I just got that part working only yesterday, one of the last things I wrapped up before this release.

I figured that would be a pretty useful part to get working!


> *Object name does not transfer to/from Rhino

Ooops, I had meant to do that one as well but I forgot. I've fixed this one up now for the next v2 beta so that object names will go back and forth as well.


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

Well, currently right-click is already being used for different things than that - right-click on the status (the eye) is used for "isolate" type hide/show, right-click on the swatch is used for setting the active style, and right-click on the name is used for "isolate" select or deselect.

I figure that editing the names and colors are not really done as frequently as these other tasks, so the general plan for that is to have a separate style editor dialog for doing that. I think I'm going to see if I can put some button at the top of the styles section in the browser as another way to open up the edit dialog though, currently you have to do it through the flyout on the properties panel.

- Michael

Hi Marc,

> Looks very functional and quite extensive for a new feature!

Thanks! Please let me know how it feels like once you've had a chance to use it some more.

- Michael

Hi Ed, re: export to Hypershot.

> Am I doing something wrong?

Nope, that part for export to OBJ is just not finished quite yet - it should end up working like you were expecting in an upcoming beta release.

The focus for this particular beta is on getting the interface and hide/show stuff working first.

This release is sort of more "half baked" than they normally are, but I wanted to get this new stuff out there even though it is not quite all wrapped up yet.

- Michael

Thanks Michael - looking forward to the beta releases and "fully baked" version 2. I'll be standing by with credit card in hand.

Ed

So far I like it a lot, I like having the browser features - I can't wait till I can export defined surfaces!

Michael, will the LWO exports be able to carry info similar to OBJs or is it more limited over the OBJ format?

I believe LWO supports surfaces and parts - just wondering what this will look like going into LWOs when it's done...

-Will

Hi Will, I'm glad that you are liking it so far!

> will the LWO exports be able to carry info similar to OBJs or is
> it more limited over the OBJ format?

Yeah some similar stuff should be feasible to put into LWO as well.

Right now I'm thinking that Styles will map to Surfaces in the LWO file, and I should be able to cluster each named object into its own "layer" in the LWO file.

I'm not quite sure how to use the "part" mechanism in LWO, from the LWO docs it says that a particular polygon can only belong to one part, so it is not really clear to me how that is supposed to be any different than LWO layers...

But bringing object names and styles over as surface/materials should be a good step forward for LWO export.

- Michael

Hi Danny,

> <...> 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, <...>

Yeah, when I got to a design that handled the type stuff in the same location and with the same UI as other kinds of batch operations, that's when things seemed to be coming together in a good direction.

That's pretty common in other applications for this kind of functionality to be split out into many different mechanisms like "layers", "named selection sets", "groups", and "commands to select by certain types", each with slightly different interfaces, access points, and capabilities.

It's been a pretty big goal for me to try and make a more streamlined UI that provides those kinds of tools but with a more unified and common access point and interface. I still have some pieces left to finish up for "Groups", but it seems like it is zeroing in pretty well to hit that overall goal now.

One thing that is pretty nice about this approach is that I can add quite a bit of additional power to the mechanism which does not end up being too hard to learn how to use since it is consistent between all the pieces.

Like for instance you can right-click on an eye to do an "isolate" - a right-click on solids will hide everything else except solids, right-click on the eye for "the Red style" will hide everything else except the red things, etc... That consistency helps with not needing to learn too many different kinds of things or navigate to too many different places to do batch operations, and it helps to provide some convenient capabilities like "isolate all curves" can now be a very natural single-click action rather than having to use a combination like "1: Select all curves, 2 : Invert selection , 3: Hide", which is what you would normally have to do if you had a types mechanism that only focused on selection and not other actions.

I had previously been thinking of dealing with types batching by having a select menu with stuff on it like "Select solids", "Select curves", etc... , but now the browser handles that job plus more direct actions like show/hide, isolation, deselection, - these would have added up to a lot of different menu items spread out through a few places.

It is kind of a new system not quite 100% following existing patterns, so there may be some kinks to work out. But I think it is based on some good principles so hopefully it should work out well...

> 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!!
> :)

:) If you're lucky it will just end up leading to general malaise and wistful thoughts of "if only I was using MoI", kind of only making your life more unpleasant and unhappy instead of putting you out on the streets. You are welcome. ;)

(just kidding of course, but if it does work out well there is an element to truth in there that you may very well get more grumbly about dealing with other UI as a side effect!)

- Michael

Awesome beta!!!!!!!

I see that you have the option to put the scene browser adjacent to or inside the side panel. You also have the option to put the entire panel on the right or left side. Would it be possible in the future to incorporate and option where the scene browser could be on the left side of the screen and the tools on the right (or vice versa)? It's kind of a nitpicky thing, but it takes less time to mouse over to the commands if you only have to move over one column of commands instead of two.

Hi Michael,

Another slightly goofy thing. When you copy an object from 1 layer, from MoI to Rhino, it inserts all the layers found in the MoI dwg to the Rhino dwg.

BTW, will MoI get a purge feature (for layers)?

-Nick

Hi Rado, I'm glad you like the new beta!

> Would it be possible in the future to incorporate and
> option where the scene browser could be on the left side
> of the screen and the tools on the right (or vice versa)

Actually you can make a small edit to the UI if you would like to give this a try right now.

Find the file named MainWindowLayout.xml, it will be in the \ui subfolder inside of MoI's main installation folder. Open this file in a text editor like Notepad.

Go to line #13 which says:
<UIPanel dock="right" src="moi://ui/BrowserPane.htm">

Edit it to change the dock= property to dock="left", like this:
<UIPanel dock="left" src="moi://ui/BrowserPane.htm">

Save that file from notepad and then when you run MoI it should have the browser pane on the left side as you want, when you are not in "inside" mode.


I'm not so sure that you are really going to save any distance traveled with doing that though - I mean the position of the main tools are in the exact same spot of the screen with either the regular configuration or with the browser-on-the-left...

You have to travel the same distance from the center of the desktop screen to the "circle" button in either configuration for example.


At any rate, that one tweak above should do the trick for you!

- Michael

Hi Nick,

> Another slightly goofy thing. When you copy an object from
> 1 layer, from MoI to Rhino, it inserts all the layers found in
> the MoI dwg to the Rhino dwg.

Yup, that's one that still needs some tuning up.

Also at the moment if you Copy/Paste between 2 MoI sessions that have different styles set up in each session you will get the kind of reverse problem where none of the copied styles come into the new model.

I'll be fixing up these things for the next release.


> BTW, will MoI get a purge feature (for layers)?

Probably yes at some point in the future but not likely for v2 though.

- Michael

Script copier utility for this beta release is attached as ScriptCopier_Apr_12_2009.exe

You can run this utility program as a shortcut way to copy any custom commands / plugins that were added to your MoI 1.0 installation into the new Apr-12-2009 v2 beta's installation folder.

- Michael