My first day at the office, I just opened MoI and I decided to write a small incomplete wishlist so that everyone can add to it. The best way to do this is to have a title sentense and then some quick description.
So, here it goes...

1. Properties window for curves : When I open a file and want to check the size of a circle for example, I have either to understand from the grid or to make one over it to check. We must have a way to know what we already have drawn.

2. Dimensions: No need to explain, everyone has a reason to use them

3. Connect curves and solids: Since the connection exists why can't we have them as a group? Pick either the solid or the curve and move them both at the same time, so the connection never breaks. Very important and useful I think.

4. Copy or clone : This is very useful for copy and array commands. A copy is an independant object while a clone will be the same object positioned elswhere, that means that when we change one clone every other clone will change too.

5. Hide curves: Visibility control for curves that are generators for solids make the scene easier to view and use.

6. History : This means many things. For exampe modification history like modifiers stack of MAX. Or, modification information window just to be able to reproduce a solid. Maybe we can be able to cancel some modifications if possible, to return to a previous stage of the object.This would make MoI a TOP PRODUCT I think.

7. Using background images : This has been asked before so no need to analyse

8. Object grouping: This has been recently explained so I guess everyone knows the importance.

9. Object naming , selecting and filtering: This can be a way of grouping but it sure is a way of filtering and selecting. The object will have a random name given by Moi and if it is a curve used to generate a solid then the name of the solid will be related to the name of the curve. Also when we create copy or clone object we can use a number added to the name. Nice and easy to understand I think.

10. Auto Solid making: A "cap ends" option for commands like extrude and sweep for immediate solid creating.

11. Add more solids : For example a tube, a pyramid...Why use booleans for these.

12. Command options and corrections: There are some commands that need more options... For example mirror command. We have to choose if we draw the axis or if we just pick a line to use it. Also if we need a copy or not. If we need a copy, do we want it a clone? (Read wish no4). Also, what about mirroring using just a point and not a line? Also, when I want to use the array command for an object just to make 5 copies on Z axis, I have to insert the X and Y distance although I don't need it.

OK, I guess twelve wishes is a lot of work for Michael. :))
I would love to read any comments and maybe add something to this list.

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4. Copy or clone

It is done!!!

Look here
Since that thread is yours, I'm just wondering... you should be better student... hehe

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Petr

Hi. Here's my thoughts on your suggestions. I agree with most, but:

3. This would probably require that both objects are driving each other, like a bilateral associativity. This would be nice for a single object in a file. But if you used the input curve to develop several objects, then moving one linked object will move the input curve, and then also move all other associated objects. Doesn't sound very desirable for many situations...

9. Object Naming - I agree that a curve named John should produce a copied curve named John1 and/or a solid named JohnSolid1 (or something like that anyway). But i disagree that naming should be randomly executed by Moi. A name must be something that makes sense for it's purpose, so its better to set a name manually and then have all child objects share that name in some way...

12. Mirror Command options - I think it is best to have consistent tools that always perform in the same way. There is really no reason to add an option for using a line for the mirroring axis. That means you have to first pick the option for it, and then pick the line to be used. That is 2 clicks, same as if you'd picked two points on the viewport. And you had the extra step of moving the cursor to pick the line option. For the option of using a sinlge point as the axis, how does Moi really know the axis direction? Does it assume you are mirroring across the Cplane X,Y, or Z axes? Does it compare position to the object's bounding box center? What if the point is 45 degrees from bounding box center? Which axis would Moi default to? Maybe it's not the one you wanted. So i think for consistency, just picking 2 points is the fastest method...

jonah

...my modest proposal

13. Blend curves (G1, G2, G3?): The Construct|Blend command should be finished so we could make blending both curves and surface edges. I think that the intended AI export makes no sense without it.

14. Loft: It might be a good idea to add an option for the loft command in order that the closed surface could be created.



15. The helix, spiral, etc.: To add the command for making this curves.

777. Unfolding: Unfolds a developable (poly)surfaces to a planar (poly)surface, optionally with connectors like in formZ. You can make a physical cardboard model, then! Utopia, isn't it? hehe..



Thanks

Petr

This is a great list! I don't think I will comment on every single item here - some of these will take a while before I will be able to get to them.

A couple of them are handled for the next beta - I've added a "cap ends" option to loft and sweep (there is one for Extrude already), and I should be starting in on image backgrounds soon, I'm hoping to start with that later today.

- Michael

Petr, don't just read the title,at the end of the next sentense you can see that what is important is that when changing one clone, every other clone object will change accordingly. That's the important part of that wish...

I know about the older post :)

By the way, nice addition to the list!

To jbsjorty:

Thanks for answering

3. I think this is not a problem, if I understand correctly you think that connecting the curve to the solid makes it difficult to reproduce the curve... No, I guess this is a matter of a new "extract" command or similar.

9. What I said is that MOI will name the objects by default and we just change the name. Every app does that... Of course we have to be able to control the naming of the objects we need.

12. For every command there is a default option. Let's keep the present way as the default way and add an option... This doesn't increase the "clicks" if you don't need it. Also the option of a copy or not is not very important but nice to have. We can always have a copy and erase the initial curve after mirroring.

Michael, I am very interested to hear your opinion about the curve-solid connection.
Also, the ability to undo some changes and control the modification history (No 6) because -at least I work like that- i often need last minute changes and I can't reproduce the solid from the start just to correct the fillet I did some days before. Also, there is no way to remember the dimensions and the values for each one of them (fillet radius, cirle radius, extrude height etc).

If there is any reason you don't want to share this info I understand, it is a software under development so no problem :)

> what is important is that when changing one clone, every other clone
> object will change accordingly. That's the important part of that wish...

Hi JTB - the part of your wish about making a clone by the copy command is available right now - that's what is mentioned in that other thread.

To make a clone that updates, use the Transform/Copy command, then select the new copied object, then run Edit/History and push the "Enable Update" button.

After doing that, you will have clone objects that will update when you edit the original.

This works because when you do the copy, the history of the copy command is stored on the copied object. But by default history updates are turned off for the results of copy - if you turn on updating for those objects then the history will kick in when you edit the original object.

You can do the same thing for several other commands as well - for example after you do a mirror, you can enable history updates on the new object, and it will then update when you edit the original.

But this does not work right now for Array though, there is a bit of a complication on certain operations that generate multiple outputs in one go, such as Array. Eventually this will get tuned up to work in a similar manner.

- Michael

> Michael, I am very interested to hear your opinion about the curve-solid connection.

It's an interesting idea, but it is pretty different than how every other history-based modeler that I know of works - you're talking about a sort of history reversal there where modifying the output of a command would backtrack and change the input to it. That's reversed from the normal flow of modifying inputs and reapplying commands to generate new outputs.

Is this something that you are imagining only applies to just moving the output? Or would you imagine that other operations should backtrack to the original object as well - like if you have a rectangle and extrude it, then fillet an edge of the extruded box, would you expect a fillet operation to backtrack to the original rectangle as well? That would be extremely difficult to achieve.

The complication that Jonah mentions is definitely a concern too - going back and modifying the original curve could then have a ripple effect that causes modifications to any other objects that are also constructed using that curve.

Here's a scenario where a curve-solid connection would cause a problem - let's say you draw a rectangle and you then extrude it into a box. Now you want to keep this box but edit the rectangle slightly and produce a new box. So you grab the box and move it away off to the side so you can get back to your curve to edit it to produce a new second box. But if the curve moved with the box as you describe, this wouldn't work. This is kind of a general problem with embedding too much history connections into things by default - suddenly what should be simple actions (move the box to uncover your original curve) end up behaving in unexpected ways. That's why many operations in MoI have history updates turned off by default (like copy for instance), because the history can sometimes get in the way of just doing simple things.


> Also, the ability to undo some changes and control the modification history (No 6)
> because -at least I work like that- i often need last minute changes and I can't
> reproduce the solid from the start just to correct the fillet I did some days before.
> Also, there is no way to remember the dimensions and the values for each one of
> them (fillet radius, cirle radius, extrude height etc).

I want to try and add this in eventually, but it will be quite a bit of work, it means that there has to be a lot more information stored than MoI currently keeps track of, and there will be quite a bit of user interface work to provide a way to manage that information.

But what you're describing here is exactly how a "parametric solid modeling" type of CAD program works, such as SolidWorks, Pro/E, Alibre, or Inventor. You may want to look into using one of these types of programs for doing this type of solid modeling - they can handle frequently changing fillets or connectors or holes a lot easier than MoI can right now.

This hasn't been a top priority for MoI partly because this type of thing is already handled very well by those other types of programs.

- Michael

Michael, thanks for the info about history update command, very useful
That reminds me of another wish, a basic manual so that we don't have to discuss problems already solved ;)

There is a big difference between what I say and what history update does.
With a real cloned objects set, you can choose one of them and everything changes. With history update feature, as I discovered you have to know or remember which was the first object because you can only change this, the others are not connected.

Anyway, I was expecting that kind of answer, that there are some CAD-like modelers that do what I want.
The reason I like MoI is exactly this, that with a simple UI, no commands, just use a mouse or tablet, and simple dragging you can do almost everything and have a fast and good quality 3d preview.

My ideal MoI future would be the current UI, with the MAX modifiers stack (sorry don't know how Inventor works) and some AutoCAD detailing (dims, hatch etc) I know that MoI is very close to Rhino, I have only tried the demo for 1-2 days so I guess there is not much to say. I can't suggest any tools you might want to add for character modeling and sculpture because I don't do stuff like that.
Also a full API for rendering plugins so that I can use my favorite renderer Maxwell!!! I can do this already, since you have obj and 3ds export.

So, as you can see, I like MoI's modeling tools and UI and this is the basic part of an application. I don't know if you are familiar with MAX or if you can suggest a better way but I think that controlling the changes and even canceling some of them is very important.
What I mean is that MoI is a great app but easily apply changes and updates is very basic because most of the times we don't decide for the product so the client is always right. Right?

Aha! You want to have a way how to change every other clone by manipulating not only the "parent", but also any other clone. I am afraid that there can always be only the relationship between parent and child (clone).
Do you know any application which works in this manner?

Petr

How else can you identify the parent circle from a group of 30 circles when you open the file a week after? Maybe there is a way with a command like "find parent" but this is not the issue, I think what I say is the only way. And yes, I know that MAX does that.

There are things I like and things I hate in MAX but I'm afraid this is my only experience from advanced 3d modelers

Hexagon allows bilateral cloning from parent to child (or vice versa). But it's limited to direct editing and transofrmations of the poly mesh. In regards to editing the input curves, that can only be done on the parent object and the changes will carry to the child objects...

jonah



"Aha! You want to have a way how to change every other clone by manipulating not only the "parent", but also any other clone. I am afraid that there can always be only the relationship between parent and child (clone).
Do you know any application which works in this manner?

Petr "

My wishes (some of them have been mentioned in other threads already)

Illustrator Import/Export. (I hope it will be in with V. 1)
Some sort of boolean operations on closed planar curves (for example union ten overlapping circles would be easier than using the trim command)
Text tool
Curve projection (again, we can use the trim option as a workaround but if find this quite tedious...)
Coons and Gordon surfaces.

I think I would be more than happy with these features... ;-)

Then maybe some parametric presets for "special" curves (cogs, stars, flowers, and of course spiral and helix...)

And I agree 100 % with the following :
Object groups, names (and colours !) + option to unhide only selected objects and not all at once...
Closed loft...

So Michael, As you can see, there are a few things to keep you busy for the coming months... ;-)

> With history update feature, as I discovered you have to know or remember
> which was the first object because you can only change this, the others are
> not connected.

Some programs use a more formal mechanism for making clones, called "blocks" or "instances", where you define a group of objects as a type of master object, then you can insert an "instance" of that block which is treated as a clone of it. This kind of clarifies the relationship and there are usually some kind of special tools that let you browse through the master objects, and handle updating them, etc.. This type of mechanism probably would solve what you are asking for here. I can see doing it eventually but it is probably going to be quite a while, I would think maybe like V3...


> Anyway, I was expecting that kind of answer, that there are some CAD-like
> modelers that do what I want. The reason I like MoI is exactly this, that with
> a simple UI, no commands, just use a mouse or tablet, and simple dragging
> you can do almost everything and have a fast and good quality 3d preview.

Well, you could use a combination - use MoI for the early stages of a design when you want to have the quick and simple environment, and then bring that design into one of those fancier CAD programs for handling the later stages.


> My ideal MoI future would be the current UI, with the MAX modifiers stack
> (sorry don't know how Inventor works) and some AutoCAD detailing (dims, hatch etc) <...>

It will probably get pretty close to that eventually. But it will take quite a few years before all of that type of stuff is in place. Many pieces will come in rather slowly and carefully to make sure that they don't add too much complexity to the current system.

- Michael

Michael, thanks for your answer, I can't do what you suggest because I can't afford to buy software like MAX because I don't really need it.
What I could do is use moi for modeling, export to obj for Maxwell rendering and use AutoCAD with 3ds export from MoI to make some detailing and dimensioning.
I believe this is easy.

Please let me add to small things.
I didn't write about text model because since I mention dimensioning you would do this anyway.
I would like to have dxf export too, Autodesk decided that 3ds format is limited and we can't have 3ds import in Revit and AutoCAD 2007

> I would like to have dxf export too, Autodesk decided that 3ds format is
> limited and we can't have 3ds import in Revit and AutoCAD 2007

I'm probably going to try that for V2. But it is odd that Autodesk won't support .3ds format since it is their own format, and also dxf and dwg have some even worse limitations in them for meshes than .3ds - .3ds is limited to 65535 points or faces in a single mesh object, and DXF/DWG is limited to 32767 points or faces in a single mesh object.

So if they don't want to support "limited" formats, that would mean they shouldn't read in DXF and DWG files either!! :)

It would be better if these programs supported the Wavefront .obj format, since it does not have any mesh size limits in it. I think if you look around there are some .obj importers for AutoCAD available.

- Michael

Hi JTB,

>How else can you identify the parent circle from a group of 30 circles when you open the file a week after?

You can
1) mark the parent object with a point object or
2) allocate a specific area of the modeling space for placing the parent object

I admit this may not be seem too attractive to you...


>And yes, I know that MAX does that.

There is a relationship between the parent and child and child and every child or parent in MAX?
So you can grab child's control point of object, move it and the parent object and every child updates?


Petr

It's MAGIC!
This is from MAX 's help files

Copy method: Creates a completely separate clone from the original. Modifying one has no effect on the other.

Instance method: Creates a completely interchangeable clone of the original. Modifying an instanced object is the same as modifying the original.

Reference method: Creates a clone dependent on the original up to the point when the object is cloned. Changing parameters for modifiers that were applied to the object before the object was referenced, will change both objects. However, a new modifier can be applied to one of the reference objects, and it will affect only the object to which it is applied.

I mentioned before that there are things are love in MAX and things I hate... This is absolutely a nice thing to have.
Another thing is that the copy command is in some way an array command too. For example, you make a box want to copy it 1 meter to the right. Before the command finishes, you see a dialog where you choose the method (copy,instance,reference) and a number of copies spinbox. If you set it to 5 for example you get 5+1=6 boxes each 1 meter from the other. Nice isn't it?

Max has many commands and methods because it has many capabilities. I am just trying to choose some of them that are easy to add to MoI not because they are Max's features but because I've found them useful. I would never add a wishlist item for animation because it is too early but I would like to see more flexibility like the one I just described.