Today, I was playing with MoI at noon siesta. I was trying some boolean operations which worked in Rhino but didn't in MoI. I wanted to try setting a tighter tolerance, but I found out that tolerance field was missing. I was quite surprised. So I asked for your explanation. That's about it.

I am accustomed to using quite tight tolerance in Rhino, therefore there is no problem with MoI's current default value. On the other hand, I think CAD app should allow users to adjust a tolerance appropriately. However, I admit that such technical terms as tolerance, geometric continuity, curvature and so forth, can lead to serious user confusion (Besides, you've mentioned a certain fact about the geometry library).

Nevertheless, you might leave the possibility to change the tolerance so the advanced user could reveal a related part of UI by "digging around" the associated html file.

Petr

The only thing is that even leaving it in there is still an issue about whether when you set the tolerance if it should be a global setting that is saved in the .ini file and apply to everything after that, or whether it should be saved into the current file. Either way can lead to different problems.

This was another issue that I wanted to get rid of by eliminating that setting and always using a certain tolerance, it makes it a lot more predictable.

- Michael

Well, I will accept your argument which appears to be quite understandable.

Petr


p.s.

>>...if it should be a global setting that is saved in the .ini file...
I think it should be saved into the current file. A new file might start with a default 0.001 value, then.

By the way, what happenes when you add the units? Will the default tolerance be altered properly if the units are changed from metric units to non-metric ones (so the "absolute" tolerance for both mm and inches will be the same) or the tolerance will remain? (0.001 units is 0.001 mm for mm or 0.0254 mm for inches; of course, 0.001 units is 1 mm for meters, but the mm and meters aren't "closely related" units.)

> I think it should be saved into the current file. A new file might start
> with a default 0.001 value, then.

The problem with this method is that then when you load that file, you would get that tolerance. Unlike anything else that is loaded from a file, the tolerance can have a big impact on models that you create from then on.

So for instance, if someone saved a file with a looser 0.01 tolerance, and you loaded that file and decided to create a new model in it, your new model would be subject to that tolerance and certain operations could possibly fail, that would not fail if you started fresh with File/New.

It's not so bad when you are loading your own files back in (since you were the one that messed with the tolerance in the first place there), but it can lead to surprising behavior when you load a file that was not initially created by you.


> By the way, what happenes when you add the units?

I was intending for the tolerance to just remain 0.001 no matter what the units were set to.

- Michael