Hi Fraser, Pilou has given you some ideas and I'll give a couple of more tips here.

One problem that is making lofting or sweeping these things difficult is that a couple of your curves are made out of more than one segment. I selected them and did Edit/Separate, and found these segments:



This is especially not good because the second one has kind of a crease in it, this will make it more difficult for it to blend nicely with the next one up. So to fix this, I selected those segments and the adjacent ones, then did Edit/Join, then selected the new joined curve and did Edit/Show points, and selected the point where they join together and deleted it. This is what it looks like just before deleting those juncture points:



After doing that, those segments are fused together into a single segment, and the crease in the curve is removed.

There is kind of a similar problem with this curve:



It is also made up of different segments, and one of the join points is not smooth.

Each time you have a curve like this that is not a smooth piece, it will introduce alignment and further segmentation problems when you try to surface it.

So for this one you can smooth it out in the same way as above, or if you want it to be creased, you can dice up the upper curve into segments as well by using Edit/Trim. Here I have done that to this curve:



So that it is now in 3 segments as well.

Now that you have things matching up with smooth pieces, it is possible to sweep them into a surface - here is the start of that - start by selecting these 2 curves:



Now do a Construct/Sweep, and select the 2 adjacent longer curves as the rails. That will give you this result:



So you can repeat that to surface the rest of the shape. This piece is made up of nice smooth parts in both directions, so it can be swept all in one go:



to get this result:



So you've got a ok framework there - the main problem that you've got is a few creases and segments in bad places which prevent getting good results from trying to use larger sweeps.

Let me know if you need more information about any one of these steps.

- Michael

Thank you so much! I knew it was me..~:?) I find 3d softwarereally intimidating - I've learned to use Sketchup - we bought it to redesign a barn... bt generally they're scary and math heavy. I'm happier modelling in the solid with plastic or wood! Moi is undoubtably the best thing to come down the (3d) road for an old duffer like me. I may actually get the hang of this!
Thanks again - not all forums are so tolerant of raw beginners.
Fraser

> I knew it was me..~:?)

:) Well, I suspect that if you had some documentation and tutorials to go through it would help out some! In the meantime since that stuff is not ready yet, I hope that some more descriptive posts like this can kind of fill the gap... So don't hesitate to ask questions when you get stuck.

Seeing the questions also helps me to understand what areas tend to cause problems and can give me ideas on how to make more progress on making things easier in the future!


> Thanks again - not all forums are so tolerant of raw beginners.

You're certainly welcome! I am very interested in making 3D modeling that works well for raw beginners, in addition to experienced people.

It is kind of a difficult task because often times "easy" and "powerful and flexible" don't naturally mesh together too well. But with MoI I hope to be taking a step towards providing both, at least to certain levels.

However, having said that there is still a definite learning curve... Like for example what you ran into in this case. The learning curve kind of gets magnified if you want to do somewhat more complex curvy shapes, there tends to be more things that can go wrong with that stuff.

- Michael

"However, having said that there is still a definite learning curve... Like for example what you ran into in this case. The learning curve kind of gets magnified if you want to do somewhat more complex curvy shapes, there tends to be more things that can go wrong with that stuff."

Yessss, I tend to want to run before I can walk... However, the learning curve here is not so horrific! I managed a (slightly wobbly) hull, so I'm pretty chuffed.
Is there a way to turn off the lines, apart from picking them out one by one and hitting the hide button?
Cheers
Fraser

>> Is there a way to turn off the lines, apart from picking them out one by one and hitting the hide button?

Hi Fraser,

After you've selected one line, just press CTRL-A (or the Select All button in the Select pane). This will select all the remaining lines (provided that all your surfaces are joined together...)
If the curves you want to hide are on different objects, you must select a curve on first object, then you can select other (full) objects and finally select curves on them.

By the way, Michael, is it normal (!) that if you have several non joined surfaces (or different objects) and that you select a curve on one of them and press CTRL-A, MoI will highlight all curves on the selected surface and all the other surfaces, not the curves ???
Maybe not a bug, but at least some "unexpected" behaviour...

> Is there a way to turn off the lines, apart from picking them out
> one by one and hitting the hide button?

There are 2 different types of lines - what Schbeurd wrote above applies to "Edge curves", which are the lines that show up at the borders of a surface. These are sub-part of a solid/surface object.

But you can also have regular individual curve lines that you drew with the "Draw curve" tools. I think you may be asking about hiding these regular lines?

Sometimes it is easier to select the reverse pieces, then do Select/Invert to flip-flop the selection.

The other thing that can help instead of picking one-by-one is to do an area select - this is when you click out in empty space and the drag a rectangle around things, this allows you grab a bunch of objects in one go.

The area select works slightly differently depending on whether you drag it starting from the left towards the right, or right-to-left. If you go from left to right, it will show a solid rectangle and only things completely contained inside of it will be selected. If you go from right to left, it will show dashed and things that intersect the rectangle in any way (not just completely contained) will get targeted.

So some strategic use of the area select can speed things up - you can often get an area that will grab a bunch of curves but doesn't contain the whole surface/solid (using the left-to-right method).

- Michael

Has another shot at a hull, this is the result. Thanks! It ain't perfect, but now I know can do it. The second Jpeg is soething a bit more straight forward - a 32 pounder...
Best,
Fraser

Fraser,
Having a go at the PT-109?
Cheers

Spinner,
Nope, when I figure out how to do things like torpedo cut outs, build an Oerlikon gun etc. It'll be a 1942 Vosper MTB...
I'm scratch building one in plastic at the mo.
Cheers,
Fraser

Samples from a few different eras there.. :) That's great progress!

- Michael

Schbeurd wrote:

> By the way, Michael, is it normal (!) that if you have several non joined surfaces
> (or different objects) and that you select a curve on one of them and press
> CTRL-A, MoI will highlight all curves on the selected surface and all the other
> surfaces, not the curves ???
> Maybe not a bug, but at least some "unexpected" behaviour...

Well, this was intentional so that Ctrl-A / Select all would behave equivalent to dragging an area selection around everything.

But I think that you're right - if you have an edge or face sub-object selection it is probably more expected that select all will only grab those other sub-objects instead of everything else in addition to that.

I have changed select all to behave like this for the next beta.

- Michael

>> Well, this was intentional so that Ctrl-A / Select all would behave equivalent to dragging an area selection around everything.
But I think that you're right - if you have an edge or face sub-object selection it is probably more expected that select all will only grab those other sub-objects instead of everything else in addition to that.
I have changed select all to behave like this for the next beta.


Cool ! Thanks Michael. It seems there will be a lot of small changes in the next beta that will make life easier ! ;-)

> It seems there will be a lot of small changes in the next beta that will make life easier ! ;-)

Yup, a bunch of little polishing here and there.

It's easier for me to quickly jump on things that don't add any new top-level UI. Stuff that adds UI to the top level makes me slow down and carefully consider it an awful lot.

Now I just need to fix this meshing bug, get selection undo working, and get back on track to work on editing background images so I can release a new beta.

- Michael

Now I just need to fix this meshing bug, get selection undo working, and get back on track to work on editing background images so I can release a new beta.

- Michael


It would certainly make life easier if one could have seperate top, side and front background images to work to!
Cheers
Fraser

> It would certainly make life easier if one could have seperate top, side
> and front background images to work to!
> Cheers
> Fraser

Hi Fraser, you can do this with the current Jan-18-2007 beta! Add in as many background images as you want - you can draw one in the top view, one in the side view, and one in the front view if you like.

This is available under View/Image - that will open up some controls in the upper-right and there is an "Add" button there, add in as many images as you want.

- Michael

Snap!
I'm building a 20mm for mine in modo and MoI currently.
Elco 80, Fairmile D and Vosper is my build order.
MoI is prooving invaluable with its easy importing to modo.
WTG, Michael!

Great!
I started an Oerlikon in SketchUp but haven't gotten around to finishing it. I did manage a 73' hull in SketchUp, but it was a complete bastard to do! In fact to do my scratch built Vosper, I modelled the bridge in SketchUp and then laid it out flat in Xara (what an ace vector prog that is) and cut plastic from those drawings.
The results, so far, are here: http://www.frasers-art.com/models/m-index.htm Working in both worlds is really 'educational' You can check out the sections you've drawn, make sure they fair up before getting busy cutting etc. My next problem is going to be finding a rorgamme I can actually afford in my now unemployed state to map, texture and colour what I do!
Have you got your work posted somewhere?
Best,
Fraser

Seems you have a very good handcraft style!

Cheers, Frenchy!
F