Hi Dryriver, thanks for the feedback!

Some of those items will be quite difficult to achieve, so it will probably be difficult to find enough time to devote to those anytime soon, those will have to be longer range type ideas.

One exception:

> - Drill and Stamp tools. A shortcut for drilling holes of a given diameter or
> shape through an object, or using a boolean object as an additive/subtractive
> stamp.

There is some support for this in the current version - it is possible to do a boolean operation on a solid using just a curve as the cutting object.

So for instance if you have a solid object and you want to cut a circular hole in it, draw a circle curve of the desired radius and placement of your hole, and then select the solid, run Construct / Boolean / Difference, and select the circle as the cutting object. This will bore a hole with the profile of your circle through the solid object.

You can do some other similar interactions as well, like draw a line that divides the object in 2 parts from one particular view, then do Boolean Difference and use the line as a cutter - this will slice the solid into 2 solids using the line as a cutting tool.

This type of curve/solid interaction also works with Boolean Intersection and also Boolean Merge.

Boolean Merge is kind of like a stamping tool in that it cuts objects up but leaves all the pieces behind.

So for instance if you have a sphere and then a circle in front of it, if you select them both and run Boolean Merge, the circle will become imprinted on the sphere and leave all the parts behind, unlike Boolean Difference that removes material inside closed regions.

Thanks for the feedback and ideas!

- Michael

Michael,

I've found in the past that thinking about how to implement complex 'advanced' features sometimes spits out elegant little methods for solving totally different things. =) So take those suggestions with a grain of salt.

The Repeating Structure Tool idea isn't as frivolous as it sounds by the way. Repeating triangle, diamond, hex or other shaped structures can be very handy for making parts lightweight yet structurally strong, or achieving the desired balance between rigidity and flexibility in parts made of materials like soft plastic or rubber.

I've attached a quick and dirty visualization of what such a tool might do. The pattern shown is simple but the skeletal view gives a clue as to how more complex 'live' structures could be constructed and manipulated by the user.

best,

-d

Sure pattern are some crazzy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penrose_tiling

Easy Selection (edge loop selection(?)

Patterns don't have to be as irregular as that Penrose pattern. Some more mundane patters:

car tire profile

http://john1701a.com/prius/photos/PriusTire_Potenza_19759miles_DriverFront.jpg

shoe sole

http://www.rubberimpex.com/images/Partners/CNCEngravingMachines/ShoeSoleMouldSampleFromCNCEngravingMachines.jpg

honeycomb car mat

http://www.roadworksauto.com/images/Frnt1pctan.jpg

shower head nozzles

http://www.made-in-china.com/image/6f3j00rvMEaQTdTtkgM/company-andyyuanhz.jpg

Hi dryriver,

I'm not sure if this is exactly the same effect that you're looking for,
but Array Dir can produce some interesting patterns very quickly.

In this example the original pair of 6 sided curves was arrayed 5X then the result was
arrayed 5X and then that result was arrayed 5X. If you gave it some thought you could
probably create some patterns that aren't the same as what you'd get from a Grid array
because you can array at an angle rather than just along the XYZ axes
And if you combined Array Dir with Array along a curve and Circular Array, the possibilities are endless!
-Jesse

> The Repeating Structure Tool idea isn't as frivolous as it sounds by the way.

Yeah I didn't think it was frivolous, it's just difficult to think of how to go about making a UI to do something like that in one step which is general purpose enough, yet not too terribly complex and hard to use...

Jesse's got a great idea there on using Transform / Array / Dir to do some of these types of tilings. If you can identify one sort of slanted column in your desired output, then you can probably use that tool to produce it in 2 passes, with different angled directions for each pass.

- Michael

Here are some beautiful patterns made by an artist
who uses Rhino.

www.rinusroelofs.nl/


-Jesse

Hi Pilou,

> Easy Selection (edge loop selection(?)

I definitely want to add that, but I'm planning on it for version 2.0.

For now you can do an area selection - after you select one edge, switch to the front view and then drag a selection window around those edges. You'll want to drag starting from the left and going towards the right - when you do it in that direction, only objects strictly inside the window will be selected. If you go from right towards the left, the window will show a dotted outline and anything that intersects it in any way will be selected.

Also for fillet you can select a face as a shortcut for grabbing a bunch of edges - if you select a face and then run fillet, all the edges that belong to that face will be rounded. Sometimes that can be easier than selecting all the edges themselves.

- Michael

> Sometimes that can be easier than selecting all the edges themselves.
yes but that round the external sides in the same times :)

A little problem (?)
When the fillet is too big, top surface dispears and auto intersect!
is that normal, I suppose yes, but there is not an alarm system for block the fillet before?

Hi Pilou, what type of alarm bell would you expect?

I guess the geometry library does not understand that an error has occured, something inside of it just gets confused about "inside" versus "outside" for that top face. This is often something that gets easily messed up when trim curve pieces end up in intersecting loops.

I guess I could detect that the original object was a fully closed solid, but the new one is not fully closed, and then not create that object.

But it is probably more useful to create the object even if it is broken in some areas, because you can then break it into separate parts and trim some of those fillets, and maybe be able to salvage a good final result by using some of those pieces...

Doing nothing isn't quite as useful. I guess what would be ideal would be to allow the object to be created, but to report that there was a possible error in it. But I haven't yet found a good location in the UI to communicate this type of feedback from MoI back to you. Do you have any ideas?

- Michael

> There is also a little free place just under it for a little text

That's normally where the name of the currently open file goes (like alarm.3dm), it's only blank when you initially start up before saving or loading anything.

By the way, here is a cleanup of your 2.0 radius version:



It was actually pretty quick to clean up - first select it and do Edit/Separate to break it into different individual surfaces. Then select all those surfaces that have various intersecting parts, and then do Boolean Merge.

That intersects everything and cuts everything up into smaller parts. You can then delete the excess parts, select it all and join it, and then use Construct / Planar to fill in the holes in the top plane.

Merge is turning out to be kind of a one-step simple alternative to Trim when you just want to slice everything up into pieces.


There is an option in the fillet engine to do something similar to this, a kind of boolean merge of each fillet piece instead of the regular attempt to trim surfaces by the fillet rails. But it doesn't seem quite reliable yet. But in the future I may be able to automate that so that oversize intersecting fillets like this will work.

- Michael

> Yeah I didn't think it was frivolous, it's just difficult to think of how to go about making a UI to do something like that in one step which is general purpose enough, yet not too terribly complex and hard to use...

There are lots of ways to approach it I think, each with its strengths and weaknesses. One easy way would be to use a network of curves as a 'scaffold' for positioning smaller pattern elements (essentially a multiple 'curve array' operation) and applying some construction rules to the pattern elements deposited by the curves. In the example I've attached, wavy curves deposit circles at regular intervals and intersecting circles get deleted. A different rule could be 'find midpoint of intersecting pattern elements and draw one larger pattern element around that midpoint'. Or indeed 'sweep area around pattern element (sweep radius = 10) and modify pattern element size based on volume of other pattern elements that fall inside sweep area'. And so on.

I don't there is a single solution that will work for all imaginable pattern types, but functions like this could help take the pain out of creating certain decorative or functional structural patterns, especially if the construction remains 'live' so you can go back and alter the construction parameters at will.

-d

Michael, is it possible to indicate the number of polygons created in the mesh export dialog?

It's always handy to know how many polygons you're creating at export time...

-Will

Hi Will, the polygon and point count is available in the command options area, in the upper-right corner of the main window.

I kind of stashed it off over there to try and streamline the dialog a bit.

- Michael

Boy, DUH! Sorry Michael!

I totally missed that info pane, my eyes are usually focused on the resultant topology of the of the mesh in the preview and the export dialog while tweaking the slider - I'm still learning MOI, I admit it!

At least now I know to look at that area for more than when adjusting parameters for modeling tools!

Thanks again!

-Will

a print option would be great. for architecture it´d be even useful to set scales like 1:100 and so on

Hi Stan, I definitely want to add printing in a future version, but it will be missing from the 1.0 version. For now you'll have to use a different CAD program to handle printing. Rhino works well for this since there is tight file compatability between MoI and Rhino.

- Michael