Hi Micha, thanks - yes I can understand more of where you are coming from now.

And yes, you are correct that v3 will not likely have such a major advancement in meshing as between v1 and v2, that's because pretty much the major things that I wanted to accomplish for meshing are actually now implemented in v2.

Certainly there will be some refinements and maybe some new parameters and stuff like that, but nothing really huge like the 25x speed increase from v1 to v2.


But I think that MoI v2 will actually get what you need done. Your last main request about preserving layers is actually very close to being solved now, the remaining script that is needed on the Rhino side is not really that complicated.


One idea that I have had for MoI versions and pricing is that by the time I get to v4 I'll probably offer the v2 release as a "lite" version which will probably be a good fit for someone like you who only wants to use MoI for one specific purpose. But it will be a while yet before I get to that stage.


But yes, as you've seen the overall focus of my business is not only about making a mesher for Rhino - my main focus is about making a CAD program for artists to use for creating cool designs. Having a great mesher is an important part of that, but it is only one part of my overall project.

- Michael

Hi Micha, the other thing that I should mention is that it is pretty common for people who are using Rhino and MoI together to use MoI for more than just meshing, they use it for drawing things as well.

So it's not exactly the case that functions other than meshing that I work on are just "wasted" for all Rhino users, there are Rhino users who make use of these other functions in MoI as well.

- Michael

Yes, I am a case in point ... I do architectural work as well as landscape architecture. I use Rhino for all my 2d drafting these days. Rhino is a pretty good 3d modeler, too, but I have come to prefer MoI for most modeling as it seems faster and more intuitive for most work. There are a few things it won't do with surfaces that Rhino does well ... so, I shift back and forth between the two as needed. Because of the drafting aspect I do use Rhino more hours of the day most of the time ... modeling (including rendering) takes up to 20% of each project but the other 80% is spent with dimensioned, detailed, drawings and notes ... MoI is not the tool for that.

It would be wonderful if one tool would do it all perfectly ... but one should not try to use a hammer for fine saw cuts.

cheers,
eric

Hi Micha, just a note on object names.

For the next beta I've added an option to control whether to combine meshes for objects of the same name or not, it will be under
Options > Import/Export > Combine same named objects.

However, Rhino's OBJ importer seems to automatically combine objects with the same name even if they are listed as separate objects. Probably you can repeat this in Rhino, do something like make 3 boxes with all the same name, export to OBJ and read it back in again.

So probably you've had this combining behavior for a while without really knowing about it anyway.

But that export batch script will not have this issue since part of that script puts a unique name on every object.

- Michael

Ah, good to know. Thank you for the MoI option.