Awesome stuff Michael!!!

Is the planar option box for creating curves something that will come with the next beta?

Hi Paolo,

> >Added a "Flip" command

> I looked on ''Petr's MoI page'' but didn't find it.

It's included with the new Apr-12 beta, it isn't one that you need to download separately.

But there isn't a button for it yet, to use it you need to set up a keyboard shortcut with Flip as the command, or use the new command name type-in by typing <tab> Flip <enter>.

It's mostly of use for fixing up a polygon mesh export of open surfaces, if your polygon program does not have a way to flip polygons without losing the good shading normals.

- Michael

Hi Niko,

> Is the planar option box for creating curves something
> that will come with the next beta?

No, right now I'm not planning on having an option box in the UI for that - already when you draw in the ortho views (top/front/right), it will behave like that. That's basically the most expected way to draw planar things.

But if you want to draw a curve or polyline in the 3D view with a 2D-view-like planar behavior (where points are forced to be on the same plane through the first point picked), then it is now possible to set up a keyboard shortcut to turn that behavior on or off.

To use it, you set up a keyboard shortcut with this as the command:
script:moi.drawingAids.drawPlanar = !moi.drawingAids.drawPlanar;

- Michael

I think you're right when you want to create a completely planar curve, but what about a combound curve where 2 or 3 points of it for example have to be planar? There's occasions where curves like that have to be drawn in the 3d view for the skake of convenience.

Anyways the shortcut is nice, but i think an option box would be more appropriate given the frequency of that situation.

Hi niko,

> but what about a combound curve where 2 or 3 points of
> it for example have to be planar?

That seems to be a pretty infrequent situation for the majority of users.

You can already do the same thing there as well, just switch to the ortho view to draw the 2 or 3 points that should be aligned with that view's plane. But now there is a new option that you can use by setting up a shortcut key.

Are you constructing some specific kind of models that has that kind of a thing come up often? If you could post an example that might help me to understand.


> but i think an option box would be more appropriate
> given the frequency of that situation.

As far as I can tell right now it seems to be a pretty low frequency thing...

I generally try to avoid putting a whole lot of advanced or specialized stuff into the main UI, otherwise it tends to make the whole program more difficult to use for everyone.

That's when having the function available on a keyboard shortcut works well - then the advanced user can have easy access to it, but the beginning or casual user does not need to be confronted with a complex UI.

Basically one big reason why MoI is easy to use is because of this careful consideration to try and avoid overloading the UI with too many things. That's something that I am trying to be careful to preserve as new stuff is added.

- Michael