Hi Michael,

>> Implemented new lighting engine.

Excellent! I like it. Shiny pastel-like color surfaces - it is so cute.



>> Updated SAT export - closed surfaces are now split into 2 joined half pieces

It won't apply in case of writing the analytic surface (i.e. moi.ini WriteAnalyticSurfaces=y), will it?



>> some additional ways to control keyboard behavior

Many thanks!
I added a few .js files with proper text within it (e.g. moi.command.execCommand( 'BooleanDifference' ) or moi.geometryDatabase.lock();) into the scipts directory and put the file name the same as an alias I want to use (e.g. bd.js). Now I can trigger the command BooleanDifference by typing bd<space>. Very nice!
I only had to discard a one-letter keyboard shortcuts like Space and B (or any other shortcut letter which was the first letter one of aliases) since they seemed to have priority.


>> Things are getting very close to being wrapped up for the MoI v2.0 final release

There is still no command prompt for Show pts command when running command without preselection like I mentioned many months ago... and I think the options dialog window section "View" needs sorting a bit (Import/Export section sets a good example). It looks quite chaotic after you added a couple of new (more or less related) buttons and checkboxes in a reckless manner ;)


Petr

Added a "both sides" option for the Line command to make it a bit easier to draw a line starting from the midpoint.

Added a new BoundingBox command which can be set up on a keyboard shortcut, which will create a bounding box (either a 3D solid box, or a 2D rectangle curve) framed around the current selection.

Added a new BoundingBoxCenter command which can be set up on a keyboard shortcut, which will create a point object to mark the center of the bounding box framed around the current selection.

Wow Michael its so awesome!
Thanks for all your hard work, and thanks for the new lighthing system also.
Im gonna play with MoI all the night :D

I wonder how much less posting on the forum could be achieved?
Brian

Wow, that's a great release!

Thanks, it seem to be working great here so far.
Thanks for all the tweaks and the hard work!

The group feature is like a teaser now, coming soon to a monitor near you...

Hoping to see it soon!

Marc

Hi Michael,

The new lighting is such a joy for my poor eyes :) great job !!!!

My only thought when I see the new 'hidded' command (explodemove, bounding box) and all the old extra scripts, it's probably time
to have a custom popup tab that you can populated with all your prefered command/scripts ... but I guess it was allready discussed over and over :P

Hi Michael,

Just playing with multiple style,
Do you thing is it possible to add some rules on fillet/chamfer command to avoid this kind of problem ?

 3 tubes boolean added, 2 white style and a red style ... when adding a fillet on this example, they all turn in red. (Image 1) ... I was hoping to have more something like in the image 2.

I wonder what a popup in rhino, of all the available commands and scripts and such would look like?? :O

I think its just a matter of waiting till the release, and the documentation of commands that can be browsed and added for special purpose. Doesnt Documentation come last?

For now I think that list is on the Petr's MoI page.

I filleted the objects, then booleaned, then filleted again, but had no control of which was the "parent Style" the fillet would derive from.

Always came from the 2 bottom cylinders. Is it More Mass determines?

It seems it would be something to have control over.

Hi Burr,

> Is it More Mass determines?

No, it's just whatever style is on the parent object.


> It seems it would be something to have control over.

Any ideas? Something like popping up a modal dialog box for every new surface that was created would probably be a pretty big interruption...

But possibly something that looks at the adjacent surfaces would work well for the situations that PaQ is showing there.

- Michael

Hi PaQ,

> My only thought when I see the new 'hidded' command (explodemove,
> bounding box) and all the old extra scripts, it's probably time
> to have a custom popup tab that you can populated with all
> your prefered command/scripts ... but I guess it was allready
> discussed over and over :P

Yup, I have some ideas for this which I want to try in the future.

For v2 there have been a lot of other higher priorities, such as implementing multi-core meshing, scene browser, materials on export, etc...

Do you think those priorities have been out of place? For example would you have preferred to have a new plug-in manager / menu thing but still have meshing unchanged from v1?

Because I only have limited time available to develop new things, those are the kinds of trade-offs that I have to decide about.

- Michael

Hi BurrMan,

>> I wonder what a popup in rhino, of all the available commands and scripts and such would look like?? :O

I'm not talking about a popup screen that list all the available commands inside MoI, that wouldn't make sence ... but just be able to build
a popup menu with my custom scripts or favorite commands ... some kind of quick access panel.

I mostly use shortcuts for every MoI's command allready, but for some extra scripts I don't use often enough, I just dont remind the shortcut ... for example, the pipe tool,
I always have to re-open my seetings/shortcut to remember on which key I mapped it 1 month ago.

I"m not asking for the 'list of all shorcuts/scripts available', or any pre-made shortcut list ...

Hi PaQ,

> Do you thing is it possible to add some rules on fillet/chamfer
> command to avoid this kind of problem ?

Hmmm, well one idea I had was to have a setting for whether newly created faces inside of an existing object would have either the parent object's style applied to them (which is what currently happens), or the active style.

But either one of those methods will place all of the newly created faces on a single style.

The desired result you show there (which seems like a good goal) doesn't have all of the new faces on a single style.

That probably makes sense to look at adjacent faces and if a newly created face is totally surrounded by other faces that all have the same style on it, it can get that style applied to it. If there is a mixture, then it can use the parent object's style. The main remaining difficulty with that, is that there isn't any way in the UI currently to set the style of the parent object without also setting all of the sub-object styles at the same time.

- Michael

I guess my post regarding this was "What determines the parent?" I couldnt seem to control this on that particular case.

I wouldnt expect a forced selection on every object created, but haveing the abilty to define a parent/child relationship if this matters as a workflow. An objects properties?

Hi Paq,
I understand now. Something like the "Scripts folder" with documentation.

But leaving this out of the main UI allows me to name my js file whatever I want it to be! Then it is just my responsabilty to create my own list of the commands I put in there to type at the command entry point.


Or for the MoI UI:
Maybe a window that reads the Scripts folder and presents a listbox of all the names in there, and a click would launch it????

Hi Burr,

> I guess my post regarding this was "What determines the
> parent?"

The BRep object that is the owner of the faces and edges is the parent in this case.


> I couldnt seem to control this on that particular case.

The style on the brep is set if you select it with "whole object" selection and set a style. But that will also set the style of all of its sub-objects as well.

- Michael

So in this photo, there are three objects, 2 styles. I'm going to boolean them together then fillet the result with .5 radius.

Seems the parent of the BREP is always the 2 cyliders. Cant make it the Red one. The fillet will always inherit the green.

Hi Danny,

> The pre selection highlight effect is quite cool, so far
> everything is running smoothly over here.

Thanks, I'm glad that you like it!

That was another problem area (along with a too dark display) that caused me to delay having colors for some time. When I first tried having colors, it was pretty strange when the color shifted to the old pre-selection highlight color when you moved the mouse over top of objects.

- Michael

Hi Petr, that's great that you can get your 2-letter shortcuts to work now, I was hoping that the new keyboard options would let you get set up for that better.

Maybe in the future I can get some more built-in 2-letter support where you would not have to hit space/enter at the end, but it is a bit tricky.


>> Updated SAT export - closed surfaces are now split into
>> 2 joined half pieces

> It won't apply in case of writing the analytic surface (i.e. moi.ini
> WriteAnalyticSurfaces=y), will it?

Actually it still does apply even then - writing analytic surfaces does not do anything for SAT export, analytic entities are not supported for SAT format export in the I/O library currently. That may happen at some point but not likely anytime soon.


> There is still no command prompt for Show pts command
> when running command without preselection like I mentioned
> many months ago...

Oops, looks like I forgot to write that one down previously, I'll see about fixing that up.


> and I think the options dialog window section "View" needs
> sorting a bit (Import/Export section sets a good example). It
> looks quite chaotic after you added a couple of new (more or
> less related) buttons and checkboxes in a reckless manner ;)

I've done a tune-up for the next release - I made a new "Colors" section that contains Background color, Surface color, Edge color, and "Locked objects use alternate color" within it. Then the remaining stuff is underneath it more or less the same as in the current beta. That seems to help.

- Michael

Hi Burr,

> Seems the parent of the BREP is always the 2 cyliders. Cant
> make it the Red one. The fillet will always inherit the green.

Maybe what I can do for the booleans is to set the new combined brep's style to be the one from the object that was selected first.

So then the order that you clicked on objects could determine things. I'll see if that is feasible.


Another idea is to maybe use Ctrl+click when assigning a style to set the style of the parent object without modifying any of the sub-objects.

- Michael