I was adjsuting points vertically according to some pattern(rule), and it was mush easier for me to input absolute coordinates than use move tool..

My main point was that coordinates adjastment is a sepatate tool for precise placing objects in space - and move is tool is yet another tool mostly used for placing obj in relation to other objects.. (employing different snaps for that part)

So it happened that access to one tool is through another tool (move) which I personally found not so convinient..

But if most people are happy then there should be something I still dont know))

Anyway thanks for explanations!

Hi igor,

>> There's no complication, what you describe hit tab,
>> type move, pick point, hit tab, change number, hit enter..

> isn't this just too much for a simple offset? :))


Just a quick note here - Burr likes to use the new type-in method to launch commands, that's why he talks there about hitting tab and typing "move".

Most of the time you would click "Transform/Move" instead of that.

The sequence for an offset is not at all difficult, here are the steps:

- Select object you want to offset.

- Run the Transform/Move command.

- Click a base point in your scene.

- Activate distance constraint by typing in the distance you wish to offset followed by <enter> (no click is necessary before typing, just start typing and your keystrokes automatically go into the input box).

- Click the mouse to define which direction you want to offset in and you're done.


These steps are not at all difficult, so I'm not sure why it is such an issue?

There are also other benefits - you don't have to think in advance about which coordinate you have to manipulate, you just type in a distance and get to specify which direction the offset will take place by using your mouse.

That also means you are not limited to only offset only in a major axis direction, you can define the direction between any 2 points that you can snap on to. This can be very important when you are working on a complex model and you want something to have a relationship to a particular existing piece of the model rather than only aligned to x, y, or z axes.


> just a refinement which all other apps already have..

Actually, they seem to be missing the functionality that I mentioned above. For example in your other apps how do you move this square by 5 units along the diagonal direction of the larger rectangle:



In MoI you do it by just following the same steps that I wrote above, just pick the base point on the corner, and the target point for the direction in the opposite corner.

That's the kind of precision control that is good to have - if your other apps can't do that, then how would you possibly categorize them as a "precision" drawing app?

Here is another simple example - move this circle by 5 units along the curve's perpendicular:



Again, easily done in MoI by following the exact same steps above, pick the base point at the circle's origin, and then type 5<enter> to activate distance constraint, then pick the direction with straight snap to follow the perpendicular along the curve.

These are some examples that I hope will show you why the more general purpose offset method that MoI is able to do can be helpful.

The methods that you keep referring to would remove functionality and make it impossible to get these results.

- Michael

Hi Igor,

> I was adjsuting points vertically according to some
> pattern(rule), and it was mush easier for me to input
> absolute coordinates than use move tool..

I don't think I saw your example... If you can post it that would probably help to illustrate it better than just a text description.

But the Move tool in MoI is pretty versatile, you can use it for placing a point at an absolute x,y,z location (just type in the x,y,z value for the target point), as well as for doing offsets.

For doing an offset you just activate the "distance constraint" by typing in a single number (other than 0, that is a shortcut for 0,0,0) rather than a coordinate value.

Similarly there is also "angle constraint" which helps you lock your target point to a specific angle value from the base point.

Both distance and angle constraint work in a similar way through a variety of commands - for example when drawing a line they are also available in the same way as they are in the Move command, to make it possible to draw a line of a specific length or angle, etc...


Probably as you use MoI for doing some more complex models, more of these things will start to make better sense to you - there is a lot of precision control that is gained by the way that MoI is structured to draw things.

- Michael

Hi Michael....

> You can use the "Move" command
Yes, it work also in 3D View, nice.... !

Then how to check the location of an object ?

Hi Anis,

> Then how to check the location of an object ?

Just run any drawing command - draw line, curve, circle, etc... it doesn't matter which one.

Then for the first point, move your mouse to that location so the point that is being picked snaps on to that spot and it will be displayed in that xyz control.

Probably at some point in the future there will be a special "analyze point" command when I get a chance to do a batch of analysis/metric type tools.

A "point object" like you are showing there is just not that frequently used, so it would not really do much good to only display coordinates when one of those special objects are selected.

When you created that point object, that would have actually been a good time to look at the xyz control to see what numeric location it was being positioned at.

- Michael

Hi Michael....

Any of the tools that draw-move-scale that produce the "snap points" will populate the coords field with the value you want.

Hi Anis,

re: Also I need to know the location of a "vertex".

Just use the exact same technique that I mentioned in the previous message (here)

Again - that is to just run any command that picks points within it, for example the line command.

Move your mouse to that vertex of the box, and then the active point will snap on to it - if it doesn't then it means that you have turned "Object Snap" off - turn it on again in that case by clicking on it in the bottom toolbar so that it is highlighted in orange.

When the point currently being drawn is snapped on to that vertex (it will display as "end" since it is at the end of an edge), then the xyz control will hold the value that you want.

- Michael

Hi Burr & Michael...

Thanks for the tips.
Yes, it work !

Ehm, you can grab the object (e.g. a corner of rectangle or point), hold mouse down and and start typing coordinates via keyboard, then <Enter> :)
You can use absolute or relative coordinate - e.g. 3,3 or r1,1

Except the relative doesn't work in V2. Why?

Petr

Hi Petr,

> Except the relative doesn't work in V2. Why?

It's a bug that was introduced back with CPlane support in v2. The bug happened to be masked if a there were previous point picks before the relative coordinate entry within the same command (such as with drawing a line, etc..).

I've got it fixed up for the next beta, thanks for reporting it!

- Michael