Hi Michael

As ever great work in the latest beta, cant believe how stable each beta has been.

Can MOI include conic curves with rho values and conic blends? much lighter to work with than g2 blends and more consistent result ie no inflections.
A simple environment map to help evaluate surface quality would also be great at the moment having to copy paste into rhino to make sure they are ok.

look forward to seeing the sweep improvements.

Jamie

Hi Jamie, thanks for testing it and for the feedback!


> Can MOI include conic curves with rho values and conic blends?

I think I can probably cook up a conic curve command, I will give that a try.

But for conic blend, that probably would not really work for the regular Blend command (the blend between any 2 edges), since that will usually have cases where the endpoints and tangents that are being connected are not all in the same plane which is required in order to make a conic.

It would be possible as an option for Fillet for the cross-section shape, but that fillet shape is not currently supported "out of the box" with the geometry library that I'm using. It may be difficult for me to add that one anytime soon due to needing to also handle corner patches where fillets run into each other.


> A simple environment map to help evaluate surface quality
> would also be great at the moment having to copy paste
> into rhino to make sure they are ok.

I definitely want to include this in the future. But I want to carefully plan the UI for it so that it may fit in with a variety of display options, so that's why this one probably won't be in for v2 though.

- Michael

Jamie and Michael,

Are you guys talking about these type of surface blends and fillets ?

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Hi Danny, I think it is related to those.

Probably easiest to explain by showing it though:



So basically you draw the "shoulder frame" which defines the end points and tangents, and then a point that the conic passes through or a rho value between 0 and 1.

The curve created in this way is an exact conic section curve, meaning it has the exact shape of a portion of either a parabola, hyperbola, or ellipse.


Jamie, do you think it is really necessary to actually have the Rho value entry? I believe that comes from a method used a fairly long time ago in aerospace for defining and recording airfoil shapes made up of conic section pieces. Would you actually ever enter in a rho value these days instead of using a point for defining the shape?


One other kind of interesting thing that it looks like I'll be able to do with MoI's conic command is allow it to create a larger ellipse segment if you move to the outer region, like this:




So for example that allows to create a precise ellipse segment tangent to 2 curves, like this:





- Michael

Sorry the animations you show are new functions ?

Hi Pilou, yes it's a new function called Conic that I just added now.

- Michael

Oooh, me likey! Seems like it may be a good tool for creating surface sheets that match other existing geometry!

Fantastic Michael!

-Fredrik

Hi Michael

Conic curve looks great. I guess an rho value is a little arcane and not fitting the simplicity of MOI so well, but will you be able to adjust the conic curve after creation? For example if you make a loft with conic curves will you be able to update the conic and see the surface update?

I can understand conic surfaces and fillets are more complex to integrate. Attached is a picture of a conic surface between tangent edges (with a spine curve, rho value .7)
This is a really usefull tool. The geometry is light and rho vlaue allows you to adjust the cross section. Also because it cant have inflections it helps create good quality geometry simply which I think fits MOI well.

Will the conic curves be in the next beta? or in V2? I guess the beta stage for V2 is nearly over and its time to earn some well deserved money.

Jamie

p.s good to hear the environment mapping is on the radar

I always vote for Value inputs. Sometimes if you know a value, its easier if you can type it in.

Hi Burr,

> I always vote for Value inputs. Sometimes if you know a value,
> its easier if you can type it in.

Yup, in general that's certainly true! But in this particular case you are not very likely to know this special "rho" value beforehand unless you are looking over airfoil tables from the 1960's or something like that... ;)

But I've added it in anyway though.

- Michael

Hi Jamie,

> I guess an rho value is a little arcane and not fitting the
> simplicity of MOI so well,

Well, I guess it won't really hurt anything and since it is kind of traditional I put that in as well.


> but will you be able to adjust the conic curve after creation? For
> example if you make a loft with conic curves will you be able to
> update the conic and see the surface update?

The output of conic is just a regular curve object, so you can adjust it by moving control points around and have a loft update same as for other curves. But currently you won't be able to adjust the rho value afterwards though, since that is not something that you can edit on a general curve object right now.

In the future I do want to make a deeper history mechanism that would allow you to adjust various numeric parameters that went into the construction of an object, which would at that point allow for that kind of tweaking.


> Will the conic curves be in the next beta? or in V2?

It'll be in the next beta. Also I added in a feature that if you snap the ends of the conic on to curves, the intersection point of the curve tangents is available as a tan/tan snap point, like this:



Also that can be used to make an ellipse segment like so:




Also the Rho value will update when you move the mouse around so you can see what Rho value corresponds to the current shape that is defined by the "through point". And also MoI will allow for negative Rho values (normally they are restricted to between 0 and 1) which will produce the ellipse segment bulging from the other side as in the second screencap above.


> I guess the beta stage for V2 is nearly over and its time
> to earn some well deserved money.

:) Yup, it's getting pretty close to being wrapped up, kind of in the final stretches here but it always takes longer than I wish to wrap up the final details.

- Michael

I was thinking that knowing the value of the one you "create" could then lead to addition of others with some kind of progressive formula.

I may not understand what this value is and how its used. I was assuming it had something to do with the curvature of the segment and that if I used .01, .05, and .1 it would give me some kind of natural progression between 3 curves.

Hi Burr, actually it does work like that so you may like to use the value in that way.

For example here is one with Rho = 0.5 :


And here Rho = 0.6 :


And here Rho = 0.8 :



As the value moves towards 0 it becomes flatter, here is Rho = 0.01 :



The category of conic section is also related to the Rho value.

With Rho = 0.5, the curve is a segment of a parabola.

With Rho > 0.5 and < 1, the curve is a segment of a hyperbola.

With Rho < 0.5, the curve is a segment of an ellipse.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Is this going to be a keyboard shortcut or are you adding it to the Draw curve icon set ?

Cheers

Hi Danny,

> Is this going to be a keyboard shortcut or are you
> adding it to the Draw curve icon set ?

I think I'm going to add it under Draw curve > More > Conic , beside Helix.

- Michael

Excellent, Michael, great addition to MoI!

-Will

Here's where the new conic command will live in the UI:



- Michael

Just stay now one place free here or can you have more levels possible? :)

Hi Pilou, I generally try pretty hard to figure out other possible ways to add functions without adding too many icons...

But in the future it will be possible for me to add more than one additional item there. It will wrap and expand to take up multiple lines if necessary, like this:



- Michael