hi, Michael

Sorry, I had not thought about using the styles.

Thanks

Hi marcorhino,

Michael is trying to do something different,
let's give it a chance.

>> 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.

No probelm with the half eye system here !

I can't wait to have a full color shading for the style (looks like styles will be my favorite managing system !)

Do you plan to add a way to select every objects from a style with a [key]+click combo ? I know I can use the browser for this of course, but that will be a nice 'visual' shortcut.


...

(where can I pre-order Moi V2.0 ? :):):) )

Ciao Paolo,

Di dove sei ?

Marco (Marcorhno)

Yeah styles rule but reserving my full judgement untill we get groups! Loving the types switch on/off function, great for selecting objects but not acidentally selecting edges, curves etc. great function. Will we get an option to lock a style so it's there but we can't select it? - useful for blueprint backgrounds. It would be nice to have a choice to select an objects style before drawing it - say for example as far as i can tell I have to draw a line in the default style and then manually select it and assign a style after which is a bit frustrating - but it maybe in your plans already just not had time to stick it in yet! One non style related point but have you considered some sort of polygonal/freeform lasso selection tool? Im finding the rectangular selection a bit cumbersome at times and often think a polygonal selection function would be much easier.

Great progress can't wait for the full v.2!
Rob

EDIT: found out how to preselect a style before drawing.....doh!

Very cool upgrade, congrats Michael

Ciao Marco,

Camisano (Vi)

Michael - this beta is brilliant!
Thank you very much.

I'm not sure about the graphic solution for the Groups, Objects, Types and Styles headers though.
So far MoI had a very consistent look but these "tabs" I find somehow disturbing and not fully fitting in.
Do we really need the little tails on the right?
Would a rectangle do that is sharp-cornered at the bottom and only rounded at the top?
ATM I find the header graphic too strong and distracting - most of the time I will have the browser open and all the categories expanded - I wouldn't need such a strong divider.
I like the darker/lighter background and all the other UI elements, but always "bounce" against the headers ;-)

Well, I guess this is W.I.P and I'm sure you will find a good solution!

Thanks a lot for your work!

Thomas Helzle

A small request, if it has not been done before:
can you add an option so that the shaded objects display the style color (not just the wireframes of the objects)?



Also, I found a nice tip for working with 'locked' layers:
Turn the display of surfaces off, so that all objects are shown as wireframes, then turn on any named objects or specific styles you want to work on.
The other objects are still there if you need them as visual references, but you cannot select them, and they don't get in the way-

Hi Michael,

Love the new beta with the browser, congratulations!
It`s almost depressing to go to work every day and have to use Autocad for 8 hours a day when you know how fun Moi is to use.

One comment on the browser though,
For me it feels more natural when in ajecent mode that the browse is on the right side of the tools.
People tend to use the tools far more than the browser, so it would be great if you move the cursor the shortest distance.
Maybe a switch if you and most people disagree with me :)

Can`t wait for the next beta!

There is one things that I would want to see before you finalize V2, one rail sweep with mitered corners, PLEASE...

Another thing that would be great is a Merge Edge command (don`t mind if it`s a script).
I encounter situations on a regular basis where this tool would be handy.
I currently use Rhino for this at the moment, no biggie, would jst be cool if you implemented it.

As others have mentioned, a lock style/groups/objects etc. would also be nice.

What about the thing I suggested earlier for fast selection without the browser visible,
type the object name directly and the object would be selected.
You mentioned something about hitting the TAB key first and then type the object name.

Final wish/suggestion (maybe V3 or further down the line):
I like to think of Moi as a concept tool to generate geometry fast with many variations (though i have used it to make polished models too).
Wild idea: Have a simple pixel based sketcher inside Moi with just a few brushes, nothing extensive.
And the ability to set up a sketchplane with the Cplane tool maybe...
Would be cool for us tablet users. No more pencil/paper and scanners :)
I believe Alias has this, correct me if i`m wrong.
Don`t get me wrong, I`m not asking for Moi to become Alias, I love the simplicity and don`t want to loose that :)

Long post, haha, been saving up comments ;)

Anyway, love what`s been implemented/improved so far, keep up the good work!
Can`t wait to buy the final V2, my plastic is waiting.

Eric

Hi PaQ,

> Do you plan to add a way to select every objects from a style
> with a [key]+click combo ? I know I can use the browser for
> this of course, but that will be a nice 'visual' shortcut.

I haven't planned on doing that with a built-in key combo - the main method for selecting by style is to use the browser by clicking on the text part of the style name.

But if I understand you correctly, it is possible to set up a script on a shortcut key, that will expand the selection to include all objects of the same style as one that is currently selected.

Here is the script for that:

script: /* Expand selection over same styles */ var objects = moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects();var styles = new Array();for ( var i = 0; i < objects.length; ++i ) { var obj = objects.item(i); if ( obj.selected ) styles[obj.styleIndex] = true; } for ( var i = 0; i < objects.length; ++i ) { var obj = objects.item(i); if ( styles[obj.styleIndex] ) obj.selected = true; }


So to use that, first select an object from the style you want to target, then hit the key to trigger that script and all the other objects of that same style will be added to the selection.

Is that the kind of thing that you were thinking of here?

This script currently will only look at "top-level" objects, it won't go into sub-objects like faces or edges that may have different styles on them. Let me know if you want a version that handles those, it will be a slightly longer script.

- Michael

Hi Rob,

> Will we get an option to lock a style so it's there but we can't
> select it? - useful for blueprint backgrounds.

Yeah I do want to add in a lock/unlock method for objects, with also a way to do it in the browser as well (probably Ctrl+click on the eye area).

But I still have quite a bit of things to finish up just with the existing stuff though, if that runs on for a whole lot longer I may have to postpone locking until v3 but I am not sure about that quite yet.


> It would be nice to have a choice to select an objects style
> before drawing it - say for example as far as i can tell I have
> to draw a line in the default style and then manually select
> it and assign a style after which is a bit frustrating - but it
> maybe in your plans already just not had time to stick it in yet!

It sounds like you already figured this out, but just to make sure - the "active style" is the one that will be used for newly drawn objects, it is the one that is displayed with an extra ring around the outside of the swatch.

You can set the active style by clicking on a swatch when there are no objects selected (when objects selected, it will set the selected objects to that style), or you can also right-click on the swatch.


> One non style related point but have you considered some sort
> of polygonal/freeform lasso selection tool?

Yup, that is something that I'd like to add in the future, but that one will definitely be sometime after v2 though.

Thanks for the feedback Rob!

- Michael

Hi Tommy,

re: graphic look of the section headers

> Would a rectangle do that is sharp-cornered at the
> bottom and only rounded at the top?

The main problem with that is that it becomes rather too similar to the palette header when the browser is in "inline" mode like this:



In the inline mode it helps to have those section headers look a little distinct from the palette headers so that they don't look like they are just another top-level palette header.

So the current look is result of solving that problem...

I'm not quite 100% satisfied with it myself, but it is a pretty small detail. Probably as you use the system more it will not end up being an issue.

If it really drives you crazy you can edit the images that are used for it, look in the \ui subfolder inside the main installation folder for these 2 files: SceneBrowserSectionBackgroundLower.png, SceneBrowserSectionBackgroundUpper.png

- Michael

Hi okapi,

> A small request, if it has not been done before:
> can you add an option so that the shaded objects
> display the style color (not just the wireframes of the objects)?

Yup, I'm planning on doing that. In my first attempt at doing it, it seemed to be a bit too dark with the current lighting setup, so I may need to mess around with the lighting some before I can make this part work.


> Also, I found a nice tip for working with 'locked' layers:

Yup, that is one way to get something similar to locking right now.

But actually that's sort of a bug, PaQ reported it as a problem earlier in this same thread. So this particular behavior may go away when I fix the bug...

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks for the script, that's perfect :)

Hi Eric, thanks for the feedback!

> For me it feels more natural when in ajecent mode that
> the browse is on the right side of the tools.
> People tend to use the tools far more than the browser, <...>

Yeah, I agree that the regular tools are used more frequently, but because they are used more frequently it can make sense for them to stay in a more fixed location so they will be in a more familiar spot all the time, rather than shifting around quite a bit depending on whether the browser is open or closed...

Anyway, that's the reasoning behind the current setup.

If want though you can edit a UI file so the panel will be placed where you want. To do this, go to the \ui subfolder inside of MoI's main installation folder, and open the file MainWindowLayout.xml in a text editor like notepad.

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

That's the entry for the browser pane. Cut that line out from that location, and paste it in at the top, just under the parent <UILayout> tag so it is first in the list of panels. That should result in the panel layout that you want.

At some point in the future I would like to make it so you could drag panels and dock them anywhere you want, but that is going to be pretty difficult to accomplish so it will probably be a while before that happens.

(but also note that if you switch this, the window control buttons that are normally in the upper-right corner of the window when maximized will still be attached to the regular side pane and will also be moved inwards as well, that's a good example of how it can be a lot more work to make swappable configurations it is not really only the matter of setting a single switch all the time).


> There is one things that I would want to see before you
> finalize V2, one rail sweep with mitered corners, PLEASE...

Yup, this work is still planned to be done in v2 after the browser stuff is all wrapped up. It will probably be the last batch of stuff that goes into v2.


> Another thing that would be great is a Merge Edge command
> (don`t mind if it`s a script).

Yeah this one is definitely on my list, but it is looking somewhat less probable for squeezing into v2 as the browser work has taken quite a lot of time and still isn't even complete yet.

> As others have mentioned, a lock style/groups/objects etc. would also be nice.

Yup, this one also is definitely on the list. It may happen for v2 but it depends on how long it takes to finish up other parts of the browser.


> You mentioned something about hitting the TAB key first and
> then type the object name.

Yeah the Tab + typing text will work now in this beta for typing in a command or script name. Like you can type in <tab> Line <enter> to start the line command if you like typing things in. The tab key puts the keyboard focus in the XYZ coordinate entry box in the bottom of the screen when you are not currently in a command.

I think that should be pretty easy to make it work for selecting named objects as well.

The general idea is to make that entry box kind of behave like a mini command line entry.


> Wild idea: Have a simple pixel based sketcher inside Moi
> with just a few brushes, nothing extensive.

I would love to do this, but it would be a very time consuming project to make it happen... Maybe for something like v5, I don't think it would be feasible to tackle it for v3 even. If there were only more hours in the day...

Thanks for the feedback and enthusiasm Eric!

- Michael

Hi Michael,

In regards to styles, once you have the lighting figured out, when we apply a colour to a solid or surface will the edges inherit the colour as well, as it does now, I think it would be more preferable and visually better for the edges to stay the default colour or an option to have the edges stay default or take on the body colour.

-

Hi Danny,

> when we apply a colour to a solid or surface will the edges
> inherit the colour as well,

Yeah that is probably what will happen normally, since when you apply a style to a solid, what happens is that style is assigned to all of its edge and face sub-objects.

You can also assign different styles to some edges and faces if you want, and if edges did not draw in their style color you would not be able to easily see what style the edge has.

Also one benefit of having the edges draw in their style color is that you will be able to see that color when the solid is selected.

But it should not be difficult for me to put in at least an .ini option that would cause edges to be drawn using style 0 (named "default" by default).

- Michael

Michael,

Thanks for the long feedback and explenation, that´s customer service :)

Man you must be one hell of a typist, no hunt an peck method here!
Answering practically everybodys posts is quite a feat.

Regards to my suggestions/requests, there is nothing that is critical to me that I do not already have,
just throwing ideas out. Except maybe the mitered corner sweep (thanks for putting it in V2).

Eric
(the software junkie)

With the inline browser I sometime get double scroll bars, one for all the tabs and one for the browser.
Maybe it could be limited to only one?




Some small details...

I agree with Thomas about the brilliant part and also on the tabs shape topic. Maybe the 'legs' could be smaller and not proportional.
I get a strange impression with the empty space created under the browser in adjacent mode, it's quite large when unexpanded.

Maybe the browser background could stretch down to the viewport length.
Also a line under tabs could help visually separating sections. (see image).











It's a massive improvement on organizing and displaying objects, I didn't had the chance to do a complex project yet but I get the impression this tool will be super-flexible, it sure open ways to manage uber-complex projects!

The sweep motion works great!

I don't know if it's been mentioned, but maybe right clicking on the browser button could open it inline or vice-versa..

Great work!

Marc