Hi Igor - those are great wishes, and they do actually fit in well with where I want to try and take MoI in the future.

I do generally want to add in a category of what I would call "communication" type features - things that can help you communicate your design to other people. Those kinds of functions can benefit many kinds of artists as well! That term "Artist" I tend to use rather loosely.

A bunch of things like being able to generate line drawings, do some basic dimensions and printing will kind of fit into this general "design communication" area, which I do want to explore!

It's hard to know exactly when all this will happen though, probably some bits and pieces will come together over time.

I think there is a good chance to use the scene browser as an area of UI to hold some of these things though, like you are showing there! That will probably help quite a bit since one of the major problems with adding in new stuff is trying to figure out where to place it in the UI so that it does not mess things up too much.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Re generating line drawings

There are two approaches to how "views/sections/cameras" are represented on a sheet(communication)
1 Viewports
2 2D generation - is a problem approach in opinion of 99% of those who used both methods in actual work and cost Archicad a large decline in customer base when Revit turned up and offered method 1 (you may check out if you still have it)

SketchUp does not generate anything 2D for Layout as well - but does not offer the flexibility of Revit where you can create a view and annotate model only within confinements of that view so that it will not interfere with the rest of the model (all annotations belong to a view - not the model) and then place that view on a sheet(communication)

Another suggestion for how it all will fit into UI and not make any damage to the overall user experience - is again to use scene browser area and have possibly two modes for it (via main tabs?) - tab one: Scene, tab two: Views(Comm) which is where all sections/elevations/3dcameras will appear as views after their creation by sections or cameras - see illustration attached
or combine them without any higher level tabs (Revit case and is show in my prev mes) but after experience with such combined browser in Revit I can say that it would still be better to split the browser as it tends to collect garbage in various divisions(tabs) and user start to scroll too much

Hope you'll find this useful
Regards,
Igor

Hi Igor, some good ideas there, thanks!

One other thing that I have thought of before would be to have an additional "Print" tab on the view layout tabs (the ones at the bottom that say Split / 3D / Top / Front / Right), which you could hit to switch the main viewport between 3D model mode or 2D print space mode.

Then when you drew anything (annotations or geometry or whatever) while in print view, those things would get added to the active sheet only and not to the regular 3D model.

Maybe the Print tab would only show up after you have initially created a sheet. But I've also thought about possibly the other way around - that the print button would be shown always and when you hit it some other UI would then also activate for setting up and manipulating sheets, but that idea was before there was a scene browser.

- Michael

Hey Igor, where did you dig this thread from ? It's like pulling out an old photo album on MoI as a baby :)

Ok, while I'm here, I wish for peace on earth...............Oh! MoI wishes.

Hi Michael,
There is one feature I do like from other modeling programs and does come in handy for repair work and that is, enlarge a surface.
In it's simplest form you pick a surface and it creates an untrimmed copy of the original surface, which would be one thing. In it's advanced form once you pick a surface, an untrimmed copy is created but then you have U and V sliders to enlarge or shrink that copied surface.
Is this possible with the geometry library MoI uses ?

--------

Hi Danny, yup that is possible with the geometry library tools. The bigger issue can sometimes be about setting up the UI for such things.

> In it's simplest form you pick a surface and it creates an
> untrimmed copy of the original surface, which would be
> one thing.

This part you can actually do right now by using the "untrim" operation in MoI. To do an untrim, select all the edges that make up a trimming boundary and hit Delete, that will remove that boundary and recover the underlying surface.

The edges must not be a joined edge between 2 surfaces though, so you may need to delete some surfaces or use Edit/Separate on any joined surfaces to break the edges you want to remove to not be connected to other things.

Also if the trim boundary touches the seam edge of a closed surface, the seam edge is part of the boundary and should be selected too.

The easiest way to remove everything is to use Edit/Separate to make the surface into a single unjoined surface, and then select one edge and then hit Ctrl+A to select all edges and then Delete.

Check out this previous post for an illustration on untrim:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=444.4

(EDIT: I just saw on another recent message that you definitely knew all about this - are you asking for something different with this extend mode than what can already be done with "untrim" / delete trim edges ?)


> In it's advanced form once you pick a surface, an untrimmed
> copy is created but then you have U and V sliders to enlarge
> or shrink that copied surface.

This one I'd need to think about the UI for a bit which may take some time... Probably it could go in the Extend command, but then when it goes there it may be good for it to have several modes like an "extend to boundary" mode like the regular curve extend.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> are you asking for something different with this extend
> mode than what can already be done with "untrim" / delete trim edges ?)

Well, sort of, it does the same thing but without going through the paces of separating, picking and finding all the edges, and you always miss that tiny edge, then deleting.
Where with an enlarge button or even a script for now, it would be; execute command, pick surface, done.

For the second part, extend a surface to a boundary sounds interesting, I don't believe I've seen something like that.

Cheers

Hi Danny,

> picking and finding all the edges, and you always miss that tiny edge,

For now at least, this particular stage can be simplified by using Ctrl+A (or in the side pane, the Select / Sel All button).

If you have an edge currently selected, then select all will go through and select all other edges on that same object, and when you have edges selected it will not go through and select other regular objects.

That will be guaranteed to catch all edges of a surface, including tiny ones.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> For now at least, this particular stage can be simplified by using Ctrl+A
> (or in the side pane, the Select / Sel All button).

I didn't even know that you had Ctrl+A in MoI so refined, I missed that one along the way :S

What do you mean, For now at least ?

Thanks

Hi Danny,

> What do you mean, For now at least ?

Well, I mean I probably won't be able to work on stuff for Extend here in v2 since I am trying to wrap it up. But maybe I will be able to make progress later at some point.

Until I have a chance to do something different, using Ctrl+A can make using the current untrim function easier.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> Well, I mean I probably won't be able to work on stuff for Extend here in v2..........

I hope I didn't come across wanting that feature now, I was actually referring to how you've made Ctrl+A like a chaining function after selecting an edge of a surface,
I thought you had some other ideas on chain selection of curves and edges.

--------

Hi Danny, no I didn't think it sounded like that, I just wish that I did have time to work on that right now...

> I thought you had some other ideas on chain
> selection of curves and edges.

Yeah, I do want to have some other tools for that, something like grow a tangent chain off of an initial selection.

Ctrl+A is just meant as a way to grab all edges easily, not so much as a replacement necessarily for directional type chaining, although for some cases they would be equivalent.

- Michael

French Version of the ScaleArray! :)
http://moiscript.weebly.com/scalearray.html

Hello Michael,

Is ScaleArray compatible with V4.0?

Hi Psygorn,

re:
> Is ScaleArray compatible with V4.0?

Yes, I just tested it to verify. Note that the way ScaleArray works you need to include a point object in the objects being arrayed. That is used as the origin of the scaling.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I had downloaded ScaleArray.zip and then unzipped it. then added "_" at the beginning of the names of "ScaleArray.htm & ScaleArray.js" files then put them in the Command folders.

However, I think I don't know how I should include a point! I know ScaleArray will work after a directional array is made but should I add a point using Draw Curve>More>Point , Because I did and then used ScaleArray but I saw no changes in the objects!

What am I doing wrong?

Hi Psygorn, did you add just one point after doing the array? If so then that's the problem - you need to add the point in before doing the array and include the point in the array operation as well.

Then select all the arrayed output including the arrayed points and then run ScaleArray.

- MIchael

Ah ok, Thanks, now it works :)