I am new to MOI and have recently purchased the full program. I have previous experience with other CAD programs but am finding MOI a real joy to use. I have worked through the tutorials in particular those relating to jewellery. I am attaching a model of a ring shank. I need to accurately place seven 1mm circles on each of the chamfered shoulders to create stone settings but have not yet found a way. Could someone point me in the right direction? Thank you.

Hi flatdog - there are several things in MoI v2 that make this a lot easier.

You can get the current v2 beta from here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm

In MoI v2 there is a new set of snapping functions for snapping a point on to a surface, so you can just directly draw a circle on to a surface and it will be aligned with the surface normal, like this:




Also another option is to use the new Transform > Orient command which lets you position an object or copy an object aligned to a surface, see here for some demos:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3179.1

- Michael

Hi flatdog and welcome to the forum, you might want to check out the new 'ArrayGem' command that Michael developed espesially for the jewelers, it's at the same link that Michael posted above.

Cheers

Michael,

I was using the v2 beta but hadn't spotted this. It gives me a workable solution. It would be useful to be able to draw a line or curve normal to the surface and then paste a given number of copies of and object along that curve. I may have missed this feature as well but I only discovered MOI a week ago. I cannot quite believe how good it is.

Many thanks for your help.

Regards,

Philip

Hi Philip,


Do you mean you have a curve that is on a surface (like if you have projected it there or got it from surface/surface intersection or whatever) and an object to copy like this:



and you want to replicate the object along those curves, having them rotate to the surface normal at every placement like this:




If so then that's what that ArrayGem command that Danny mentioned above will do.

There is not an icon for it yet, so if you want to call the ArrayGem command you have to set up a shortcut key for it, or type in the command name.

For type-in, push the Tab key first to put focus in the x/y/z control which can work as a mini command line entry, then type ArrayGem and push Enter to launch that command.

To set up a shortcut key, go to Options > Shortcut keys, and push the "Add" button to add in a new entry at the top of the list. For the "Key" column put in whichever key stroke you want to be the trigger. Like if you put in A there then it will trigger whenever you push the A key on the keyboard. Then for the "Command" column (the second part on the right side), put in ArrayGem. That will then let you call the command.

For ArrayGem you also have to include a base circle with the objects you are going to copy, which is how the radius of the items is defined for the spacing.

For some more details on ArrayGem check out these links:
(for the first one scroll to the bottom and click the "View full message" link)
http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3179.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3034.57


- Michael

That's it - perfect thank you.

great feature Mickael !! it's so usefull but do you plan to add a real icon for this fonction in V2 release?
because right now it begins to have to much shortcut to remember, and if we don't use each of them often, it's very difficult to remember of all....
so please add it with icon in the array fonction ;)

thanks

alex

Hi alex,

> it's so usefull but do you plan to add a real icon for this
> fonction in V2 release?

No, I don't plan to have an icon for this for v2... For v2 you'll need to remember what shortcut key you set up to trigger it.

If you forget, you can go to Options > Shortcut keys to see what shortcut keys you have set up.

I'm not sure exactly what will happen for this command, I think it could be possible to combine its current functionality into the regular ArrayCurve command, I'm going to look into that for v3.

- Michael

You can also load the plugin gallery tool from Petr's MoI page on the resources tab. This allows you to setup all your commands with icons and names so you can easily see them and remember.

Mine looks like this:



Actually, this is pretty antiquated for me now as you can see with some old commands thast arent really needed in the new V2. You can also make it just text links and pack in a big list of links to launch all your commands. I want to just make my own at some point for fun.

Thanks Mickael.

And thanks Burrman, I was not aware of this , I will take a look quickly ;)

alex