Hi Michael (and everyone else). I've been researching a prototyping system to purchase, and have come across the Roland MDX-540. Great little machine.

From a Moi standpoint, it would be great if there was a third party add on that would allow toolpaths for CNC machining to be generated within Moi. Rhino currently has this ability through an add on called Mayka from www.picasoft.com You essentially "print" to the software from within Rhino. I'm not sure what has to be done to allow Moi to talk directly to Mayka, but perhaps the common 3DM file format that Moi and Rhino share would make it easier. I know you can export an STL from Moi and then import it into Mayka, but the whole import/export procedure is where errors tend to creep in. I tend to work at a .005" or better tolerance, so even small errors matter.

I like Moi and will continue to use Moi, I'm just looking to streamline my processes.

I have no idea how to program, so I won't even pretend. LOL

Just a thought!

Chris

Hi Chris, I would like to enable 3rd party plug-ins for MoI at some point in the future, but I'm not really sure when that will happen. It may be quite a while because supporting other developers (helping them to design their software using MoI, helping them to debug their code, etc...) is very time consuming.

With Rhino for example there are a lot more people working on supporting such things. Since I'm working on MoI all by myself there are some areas that I just don't have enough available time right now to get into. 3rd party extensions currently fit into this category.


> I know you can export an STL from Moi and then import it
> into Mayka, but the whole import/export procedure is where
> errors tend to creep in. I tend to work at a .005" or better
> tolerance, so even small errors matter.

Well, STL is a very simple file format so that makes it a lot less likely that there would be any errors with another program reading the data from the STL file. Some other formats like STEP and IGES are far, far more complex formats than STL.

So I can't see how you would really get any errors by using STL format to transfer data over, as compared to a "direct" transfer. The same data should go into Mayka in either case. If you have some example of an error that you think was caused due to problems in an STL file, could you please send me the model data (both 3DM and STL files) to me so I can check them out?


> I'm not sure what has to be done to allow Moi to
> talk directly to Mayka, but perhaps the common 3DM
> file format that Moi and Rhino share would make it easier.

Well, plug-ins work by making use of the various services that a host program may provide. Even though the saved file format is the same, the various runtime services like how the UI functions are quite different in MoI than in Rhino so it isn't possible to just take some plug-in that has been written to run inside of Rhino and then just run it inside a different program.

It's kind of like how you can't just take a water pump from one car engine and just stick it into a different car engine - all the mountings and connections are different between each engine...

- Michael

Michael, thanks for taking the time to explain it all. I can completely see your point.

As I've said before, I will adjust *my* work style to make the best use of Moi.

Cheers,

Chris

Hi Chris,
I use Moi to create models and Vectric Cut2D and Cut3D to convert to toolpaths. Works perfectly.
Gaston