Coming from a strict mechanical cad (traditional type) in which the software was easy to throw parts together into assemblies (think Alibre, SolidWorks, etc), what method are those of you that appear to make assemblies in Moi using and how do you move parts to the right locations once modeled/imported?

I mean in the gallery there are things like an entire hospital room modeled including the hospital bed, or the set of motor cycle gauges, or full vehicles.

Is the 'best practice' for Moi to build all the parts of an assembly in-place and grouping each object set appropriately. Or is the approach to model each component in a separate file and then bring them together into one model and move them into place?

The approach for modeling that Moi uses is such a relief and gift of freedom from standard history based modeling (which I still need to use for various reasons) but being in the stricter world of mechanical cad tools I am looking through a tunnel right now rather than having my eyes actually opened fully, and I want them open!

Assembly modeling - fake it? Model everything in place? Model objects in one file and move them around? Model separately and bring them together? Lastly, model in Moi, export, and then assemble in my standard CAD tools?

Great gallery contributions by the way. anyone in there should be pretty proud!

mshideler

Hi mshideler, often times people just model different parts directly in place, that can be a simple way to do things.

Unlike the traditional solid modeling method of having a separate "Part" and "Assembly" programs or modes, in MoI you just work in one environment where you can have multiple objects if you want or just one object if you want.

There are some different tools to accommodate different ways of working though.

If you want to model something directly in place, you can use the View > CPlane tool to set the construction plane to some specific local area and that will cause the drawing plane and the Top/Front/Right views to be oriented around that local area so that you can more easily draw things in that spot directly:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference5.htm#cplane


If you like to model parts in separate files you can do that as well - there is an "ImportPart" command that can help with that:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference1.htm#importpart
That's available by right-clicking on the Import button and that will let you open up a model from a separate file and then allow you to place that model into the scene and rotate it into place using the orientation picker.

If you want to model several parts within the same environment and then position them into place, you can do that too - to do the positioning step you use a combination of some Transform commands along with object snaps for placing each reference point in the transform to precisely position things together. Construction lines can be helpful for this stage as well. The Transform > Orient command is probably the most general tool for positioning objects since it handles both moving and rotating an object into place within the same tool:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference8.htm#orient

See here for a discussion on how to use Orient:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3424.13
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3424.14


And here are a few demo videos Orient or ImportPart in action:












There is also a PastePart command that is similar to ImportPart, but that lets you bring parts over (and position them) using the clipboard instead of a file import:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference4.htm#pastepart


So there isn't just one way to do such things - you can use whichever of these methods you prefer. There isn't really any one of these methods that I'd consider to be a better or a "best practice" as compared to any other, just use whichever method you feel most comfortable with.

- Michael

And just to answer this part:

> Assembly modeling - fake it? Model everything in place?
> Model objects in one file and move them around? Model
> separately and bring them together? Lastly, model in Moi,
> export, and then assemble in my standard CAD tools?

You can use any of these or even use some combination of them.

If you have some relatively simple parts then just the "Model objects in one file and move them around" is a pretty straightforward method though.

If you start having some more complex individual parts or also if you have some parts that you may be wanting to re-use a lot in other projects later on, then that's when having things in separate files can be good.

But having more files kind of makes more things for you to manage and keep track of yourself also though. So if you have parts that are simple enough keeping them all in one file is kind of convenient.

- Michael