Hi Danny & DesuDeus, yup definitely some more scripting integration would be a powerful addition. Just the current level of scripting gives a quite a bit of flexibility since I can often help people out with automating something like the equivalent of pushing several buttons in sequence or stuff like that.

The problem is that scripting is in general a fairly sophisticated technical thing, and even with additional work to try and make it more accessible, it will still even at that point be out of the range of what many users will be able to understand how to leverage.

Meanwhile increasing the power of regular commands with additional options is not like that, the benefits from those are much more widely applicable to all users instead of just a select few users who can do programming.

So that's why the priority is more towards making the "regular features" work better and have more capabilities first, rather than working on things for programmers or the most advanced users first.

But that's just a matter of priorities about what happens first, I certainly agree that it would be valuable to add more scripting stuff like macro recording, etc... But it's not possible for me to work in every single kind of area all at once.

@ DesuDeus, you wrote:

> for example letting the user re-organize the buttons like
> he want, create panels, collapse things etc...

Well, it is actually possible to do this right now, all the files that make up the UI are stored as text files under the \ui subfolder in MoI's main installation folder. If you edit those files you will be changing the UI, that's how some custom UI layout like the ones in these previous links have been done:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3756.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3597.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1521.1


> With instancing + scripting you could make fake parametrics.

See these previous discussions for some examples of this using MoI's already existing scripting support:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3341.1
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2922.1

So the stuff that you're talking about is actually already possible in MoI. However, it requires a pretty in-depth knowledge of how to program in order to be able to do these kinds of things.

- Michael

Well, it is actually possible to do this right now, all the files that make up the UI are stored as text files under the \ui subfolder in MoI's main installation folder. If you edit those files you will be changing the UI, that's how some custom UI layout like the ones in these previous links have been done

Yeah Ive seen those threads before, but it's not exactly user-friendly aha.
I was thinking about drag'n'dropping panels around, saving different workspaces, that kind of stuff.

See these previous discussions for some examples of this using MoI's already existing scripting support

Also seen thoses, I think.
That raise another problem, a lot of threads get buried deep in the forum and nobody see them.
Kinda like that guy asking for Ship Hull advices. Why don't you use a regular forum engine with sticky posts and categories ?
I know you like this forum layout because you can see quickly the latest threads, but it's also possible with other forum engines to have a list of the most recent threads.

The problem is that scripting is in general a fairly sophisticated technical thing, and even with additional work to try and make it more accessible, it will still even at that point be out of the range of what many users will be able to understand how to leverage.

True, but the idea is to have the people who know how to script to share their scripts.
That's how user-created content work :) The end regular user just have to download those scripts and run them.

Hi DesuDeus,

> Yeah Ive seen those threads before, but it's not exactly
> user-friendly aha. I was thinking about drag'n'dropping
> panels around, saving different workspaces, that kind
> of stuff.

Yes, but unfortunately it takes quite a lot of work to make all that stuff happen.

When one feature area requires a lot of work, that then means that time is taken away from other feature areas since there are only 24 hours in a day and I can't work on every single kind of feature all at the same time.

Early on in MoI's design I decided to focus my effort more on the overall default UI design to make that as good as possible, rather than spending a lot of time just on the underlying mechanisms for making more user friendly UI arranging tools.

But UI customization is an area that I do want to improve in MoI though, I hope to spend some time on it in v3, probably I'll focus on more of a kind of UI editing dialog where you can see a kind of list representation of the UI and change entries in it there.


> That raise another problem, a lot of threads get buried deep
> in the forum and nobody see them.

Well, there's a search function.... It's not possible to present every single discussion thread all at the same time because there is only so much room on the screen to show stuff, kind of like how it's not possible for me to work on every single feature area all at the same time... :)


> Why don't you use a regular forum engine with sticky
> posts and categories ?

What would you suggest for categories? If you get a ton of categories that then fragments discussions, some people won't go look in various categories, people will post in the wrong category and then there are discussions about the categories themselves, etc... It's much more simple for a fluid discussion to have things structured as the current forum.

There is a wiki available too though, that's here: http://moi3d.com/wiki - that works as a reference index to some valuable posts, for example for the ship hull stuff there is now a link to that in the wiki.

If there was a category for "ship hull discussions", that would probably be buried in such a big list of categories that it would be hard for people to find it.


> True, but the idea is to have the people who know how
> to script to share their scripts.

Well, that's actually happened already, there is a collection of shared scripts here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/

That's also already linked to from the wiki.

Don't forget to check the wiki if you want to find indexed stuff like that...

The wiki is linked to from the main moi3d.com home page, it's the resources link on that main page.

- Michael

Hi DesuDeus, so just to clarify - the wiki actually serves the purpose that a "sticky post" would do - it keeps a persistent index of stuff available that does not scroll around based on age or what the current discussion is.

That works a lot better than having a bunch of sticky posts directly in the forum clogging up the regular discussion flow.

So discussion happens in the forum, and collections of links and stuff like that happen in the wiki, many of the links in the wiki are also links to particular forum discussions in the past as well.

- Michael

Hi Michael...

Just for your reference "hole wizard" from one of the parametric system : http://www.google.com/search?q=solidworks%20holewizard&tbs=vid:1