> You don't even need to click, just type your numbers in and push enter and it uses them.

In the polyline command It would be nice just to having to click, set the direction with the mouse, enter the value and pressing enter.

Now when drawing a polyline, I do the initial click, type in a numeric entry and if I press enter the commands stops.
I have to click to go to the next entry distance in the polyline.

Again I may be missing something!

Marc

Hi Marc, no you're not missing anything - when you set distance constraint to help you draw a segment of a particular length it does not finish the pick immediately. Instead it modifies what is happening when you move the mouse around after that.

AutoCAD does it in that "immediate" way, and I've thought some about that before but one problem is it actually loses some functionality that way because it does not give you a chance to pick some snap points.

Here's an example - here I am drawing a line and then I activate distance constraint to make the line 6 units long by typing in 6 and pushing Enter:



Notice how there is a new intersection snap point that shows up after the distance constraint is activated? That snap would not really be possible if the distance was immediately applied to whatever direction the mouse happened to be pointing in.


It also just seems more user friendly the current way, where you set the constraint and then pick with the mouse because you get to see the constrained line on the screen with some visual feedback before picking it.


But maybe in v3 I can put in an option like "Apply distance immediately" that you could set if you wanted it to behave like you are talking about, maybe only when it was typed in the fast way and you could still get those snaps if you set the distance constraint by clicking on the distance control...

- Michael

"Apply distance immediately"
Maybe not very useful as you miss using any helpers for make some vanish shoot with a constraint given

Hi Michael,

This all makes sense, I didn't thought of it this way.

But yes, it might be useful to have a "direct input" option for polylines, when you have to reproduce a set of measurement it's a bit faster.
Or maybe if you press another time on enter? Although this might interfere with some underlying logic.

Marc

you can type full coords if you want. polyline-pick point-type value hit enter-hit tab-type coords.

Hi Marc,

> Or maybe if you press another time on enter? Although this
> might interfere with some underlying logic.

Yeah I'm not so sure about messing with enter for that, since it is already being used at that point as an alias for pushing the "Done" button...

I think maybe a good way to do it would be to have some option like "Apply distance constraint immediately" under Options > Snaps that when checked would then make it behave like you were talking about.

It should not be difficult to add this in for v3 - I've added it into the wiki wishlist to help keep track of it.

- Michael

Michael, when I worked in Lightwave, Newtek gave you the option of being in "numeric" mode or "sketch" mode. I like the idea of hitting "n" and being in the numeric entry mode.

Perhaps for V3?

Cheers,

Chris

More progress. Booleans rule! LOL It is very nice to know that if the real thing is 8'2" in length, then my model is also 8'2" in length. Once it is completed, I scale the entire thing to 1:22.5 and output an STL for RP.

Sweet!

C.

Hi Chris,



What would you want to have happen when you were in "numeric" mode?

In MoI you usually don't need to go into any kind of special mode to do numeric entry, just type a number and the keyboard focus will automatically go to the first available numeric input field (like the radius field for a circle for example), or the x,y,z input control in the bottom toolbar if a command does not have any special numeric fields.

It basically knows to go into numeric entry mode because you typed in a number - isn't that more convenient than having to type some thing else like 'n' first?

- Michael

Hi Michael. I think it is another case of me trying to "out think" the software. I am so used to having another tab on screen for numeric input that the mere thought of just typing numbers gives me the willies. LOL

Perhaps I will finally become one with Moi after some more work/practice. I will say however, that it is working quite well so far. I like the SIMPLE interface. Now I just need to figure out how to pay for it.

Please don't let it "evolve" into another (impenetrable) SolidWorks.

Cheers,

Chris

>>>Please don't let it "evolve" into another (impenetrable) SolidWorks.
>>>>>>>.

Well, when they give him 20 million for MoI, because it is the best, and then integrate and bloat it, we will have to find out what he's working on with his son, and buy that! :o

Hi Chris, don't worry, it is a major goal for MoI to keep its streamlined interface and ease of use as it evolves. I put a lot of effort into planning the UI in order to make that happen.

V2 has already been very successful in this department, since there has been a whole lot of stuff added in but without a "bloat" happening to the UI.

One thing that I try to do which helps a lot is to try and increase the power and flexibility of the existing tools when possible.

- Michael

Making some good progress on my model. I'm hoping to output the STL file for RP printing next week.

I am also *finally* getting used to "just typing numbers in" for numeric input. LOL

Cheers,

Chris

My RP guy is getting odd translation errors from my IGS file conversion. Any ideas? I turned up the polygon level to its highest setting when I did the output/conversion.

Thanks

Chris

Hi Chris, above you wrote "IGS" file conversion - did you mean STL conversion?

Normally to get a clean STL file generated, you should have just a single solid object that you are exporting.

In your case you don't have that - instead your model is made up of 11 different individual objects, note the readout after a "Select All" here:



Also if you look in the scene browser, you can see that you have at least one object that is an open surface instead of a solid:




You can use the scene browser to select that open surface object by clicking on the text for "Surface" there, that identifies this part as the one that is not a solid:



Then running the script from here which selects naked edges, identifies these edges as being open and not attached to anything else:




So to remedy that, select that crossbar piece and then run the Construct > Planar command, which will fill in the open end with a trimmed planar surface and seal it off.

Once you have done that, you will then have 11 solids in the file.

It may possibly work at that point, for some cases it may be ok to have multiple solids within a single STL file but really the main original intent for an STL file is that it should contain just 1 single solid in it and not multiple ones.

So then you would probably want to use boolean union to combine those multiple solids together where they are touching so you only have just 1 solid. That's what I've done with the attached updated 3DM file.

The attached file is now all ready to be exported to a good STL file.

- Michael

Michael, I'm on the run today but I wanted to say THANK YOU for your help. I will post photos of the RP output next week.

C.

Michael, is the "scene browser" available in the demo version? Did I miss it? LOL

Thanks

Chris

Hi Chris,

> Michael, is the "scene browser" available in the demo version?

No, it's available in the v2 beta - the demo version is v1 and doesn't have it.

There are a whole lot of improvements like this in v2, v1 is actually about 2 years old at this point.

I've just recently released the final v2 beta - next I will be updating the documentation and after that is done then v2 will be released and at that point I will update the demo version to be a v2 demo instead of the current v1 demo.

- Michael

Yes, I started with V1, and thought it was pretty good.

V2, however, is fantastic :)

Hi Michael. My 3D model got bounced once again by the RP house for not being watertight. Any suggestions? I've run the "find naked edges" script, but have been unable to repair the model. Can you guide me through this?

Thanks

Chris