McNeel (rhino) have just today released an iphone / ipad app that will read 3dm files, so if your are wanting to cart your moi files around on your mobile, seems like the way to go.

just go to the app store and search for irhino.

cheers
rabbit

Hi rabbit - one note about that - it sounds like it may only be reading the render mesh data from the 3DM file and not actually able to draw the NURBS data directly.

If that is the case, then it probably won't work directly with MoI generated files because MoI does not save render meshes to 3DM files since it tends to increase file size by a significant amount.

- Michael

No, it looks like it is the whole file, minus the mesh. If i email myself one of the sample files, i get the whole nurbs model, and when importing it into rhino for the first time, it has to create the render meshes. (couldn't open that file direct in moi because it was a V5 file). So i will do a little testing and report back....


Are you intending to expose the meshes within a moi file at all?
I find it frustrating that, for example, if i have a 3dm ex rhino that has both meshes and nurbs, that it is only the nurbs that will come across - a case in point last week was a file that had some mesh ex the 3D warehouse in it, and i wanted to eventually end up with everything in sketchup, thru moi (because of its excellent su export)....

There is another app called stl viewer which can i think import obj files, so maybe that is the way to go for moi users...

cheers
rabbit

Hi rabbit,

> Are you intending to expose the meshes within a moi file at all?

Right now I don't have any set plans for that, it opens up quite a lot of potential confusion like why wouldn't Booleans or all the other kinds of tools work on those kinds of objects, they would just kind of sit there and not behave like a regular object...

I may give it a try eventually but for a while MoI is just focused on handling NURBS objects and not with working directly on mesh type objects in the modeling environment.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

While you guy's have been talking about this subject I just realised is this why the rendering programs that have .3dm import capabilities fail with MoI models because there is no mesh data, would this be right in saying that ?

Is it possible to incorporate mesh data on saving as 3dm ala tick box option, of course knowing that we would not be able to use that mesh data in MoI but compatible with the rendering programs that offer 3dm import support.

Cheers

Hi Danny, well which rendering programs are you talking about?

The 3DM importer plugin for Modo fails for this same reason, because it only tries to read render mesh data that is attached to the NURBS models and does not actually process the NURBS data itself.

But other programs like Carrara or Hypershot do process the NURBS data, and any problems they run into with direct 3DM import are just problems in their conversion of NURBS to mesh. That's not the same issue. You're usually better off not using a rendering program's direct 3DM import in these cases just because MoI's mesher has had more effort put into it than the mesher that the renderer is using.

- Michael

Michael, couldn't you not allow to export meshes and save NURBS with render mesh, but ignore mesh data for opening? I would be so glad, if I could keep the layer structure during meshing. If you would implement this (it could be a hidden option in the ini file), no confusion would be caused, because meshes can't be imported/opened.

Micha

Hi Micha,

> Michael, couldn't you not allow to export meshes and save
> NURBS with render mesh, but ignore mesh data for opening?

Well, that would be possible, but the whole point of not storing render meshes is that they bloat up the size of the 3DM file by a large amount.

If MoI generated 3DM files that had render meshes in them and just ignored them on load, it would cause a large increase in file size without any benefit for regular MoI users since that data would just be ignored.

Making huge files with no benefit for regular users is not that great of a feature.


> I would be so glad, if I could keep the layer structure during meshing.

Isn't that a different thing than whether to store render/display meshes on NURBS objects in the 3DM file or not?

- Michael

If you would add ini options for displaymesh-to-3dm save, than no user who don't need it would get a large file. The problem is, that it isn't need allways. So, if I could enabled per shortcut than it could be better.

If the display mesh is saved to the 3dm, than it can be extracted at Rhino ... ;)

> Isn't that a different thing than whether to store render/display meshes on NURBS objects in the 3DM file or not?

Yes, I hoped, if you can save display meshes to the 3dm file per special option, than you could allow a mesh export too. It would help so a lot. I could mesh complete scenes within one pass. OK, you havn't the 3dm file format available at the export format list, but couldn't you not allow it to enable this output for advanced users per ini option. So, user who enable it, know that this 3dm meshes can't be reimported. Please try to add this feature, it could save a lot of work.

Michael,

> If MoI generated 3DM files that had render meshes in them and just ignored them on load,
it would cause a large increase in file size without any benefit for regular MoI users since that data would just be ignored.

I don't think that is such a big concern these days, hard drives can store massive amounts of data.

Hi Kevin,

> I don't think that is such a big concern these days, hard
> drives can store massive amounts of data.

It tends to get awkward when the model files are something like 10 times greater in size for things like e-mailing your model files or posting them here on the newsgroup for people to download.

Transmitting model files like that is something that happens pretty frequently...

Rhino has to have a special extra "Save small" command separate from the regular Save command in order to solve this problem. That's a good example of the kind of thing that causes a sort of "bloat" or clutter to the UI which I've tried to avoid with MoI.

- Michael

Hi Micha,

> If you would add ini options for displaymesh-to-3dm save,
> than no user who don't need it would get a large file.

Yes, that's true! But it's not simply a matter of making an .ini file flag, features like putting the display mesh into the 3DM file require me to code them, I don't just set a flag and the feature pops up in MoI automatically... :)

It can be hard to justify spending time on a particular feature that is totally hidden from regular use by only being accessed by an .ini option.

.ini options are normally better used for things that are a modification in behavior of existing features.


I do have exporting a 3DM mesh file on my list of things to look at in the future, but it's unfortunately an awkward thing to integrate into the regular UI. Having 2 different kinds of 3DM files listed in the regular file types dropdown could easily lead to confusion, with one 3DM variation being MoI's main save type, and the other mesh variation being a completely different type of data that could actually not even be read back into MoI. There is potential there for someone to actually lose their data by mistakenly saving to the wrong 3DM variation.

So probably at some point it will be something that could be accessed by script, and if I had a script library UI that people browse though scripts more easily that would then make it a more accessible thing than only enabled by the .ini file.


I'm not sure when I will be able to work on these various pieces that would go into that though.

- Michael

Wow! I had a moi file lying around that I had previously saved as .Iges, then imported to rhino, saved and now I can see it on my iPad! My clients are going to be shocked!

I really don't understand the obsession with saving meshes in the 3dm file. Whats wrong with using one of the various export options MOI provides. Don't tell me that it's because the iPhone or the iPad can't read them. That's Apple's problem, not Michael's. The mesh data that Rhino saves is not meant to be extracted anyway. It is internal for Rhino's screen renderer and is not very good (no n-gons, no point welding, etc) for use in anything else.

Has anyone else tried the stereo feature?