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

Hi Michael,
a few things that have come up for me.

In 3D could we have rotate about mouse pointer rather than 0,0 which wizzes things off screen when zoomed in.

Could we have a buttton that centres a new object on 0,0 I know we ought to do it right but I don't always.

I keep going back and forth between Construct and Transform, I notice that there is a bit of room at the bottom of that section, any chance of having them both on screen at once?

For us jewellers Grid Snap is a boon, but when you get down small (1/10mm) you have to switch it off, I know someone suggested that a 1/10mm grid appear when you zoom up large , perhaps a flagged reminder on screen that this has happened?

If I create a solid inside another but with a surface level with another , I find the smaller one hard to select, how should I do this?

regards Tim.

Hi Tim,

One way to select a smaller object inside a larger object is to
do an Edit>Copy of the larger object, then delete it. That will
give you free access to pick the smaller object.
Then you can click Paste and bring back the larger object.
Hope this helps.

Michael,

I'd like to ask if there is a way right now to script the arrow keys and up and down keys to move an object. Last night, I brought a model from MoI into Rhino so I could render it... The arrow keys were really helpful in positioning lights.
By using the arrow keys, you can nudge things along the world axes. Since it's not viewport dependent, you can keep your eyes in the perspective viewport.

This is just a quick preliminary rendering of the project.

Thanks,
Jesse

Thanks Jesse,
hadn't thought of that, sometimes these solutions are a bit devious!
regards Tim.

Hi Tim, thanks for the feedback!

> In 3D could we have rotate about mouse pointer rather than 0,0
> which wizzes things off screen when zoomed in.

This one would maybe be a bit difficult. The rotation point needs to be a 3d point in x,y,z space. Your mouse pointer is normally only a 2d location on the screen. There are different ways that can be used to calculate a 3d point from the 2d mouse cursor location, such as intersecting it with the grid or snapping on to a nearby object, but these normally happen during drawing commands where you have a lot of feedback for where that point is while you move the mouse around. For rotation this wouldn't happen, it would need to suddenly generate that 3d point without doing a bunch of tracking around of it beforehand. This would probably be somewhat confusing and hard to control.

The rotation center point doesn't have to be 0,0,0 - that's just what it starts out to be.

The easiest way to change it is to select some objects and use the "Reset" button that appears on the panel at the bottom of a viewport. This will zoom to fit the selected objects to the screen, and it will also place the rotation pivot point at the center of the selected objects.

So after a "Reset", you should be able to easily rotate around the selected objects without going off into space somewhere else.

The other method is you can use the "Area" zoom on that bottom panel as well - that lets you pick a point and drag a zoom box around it. The point that you pick can be snapped on to any point you want, and that point will become the new rotation pivot. So if you want to focus in on the corner of a box for example, do a zoom area and snap the center point to the corner of the box and drag a rectangle around it a little bit. Now when you rotate you will pivot around that box corner.


> Could we have a buttton that centres a new object on 0,0 I know we ought
> to do it right but I don't always.

If you need to center it later on, try the Transform / Align tool. You can use 2 applications of that and switch between horizontal and vertical centering and snap the target point on to the origin and that should do it.

If you can identify a center point of the object to grab, you can also just drag it to the origin and it will snap there, make sure you have Object Snap enabled, it should be highlighted in orange on the bottom bar. Sometimes the Transform/Move command can give you a little more control than dragging since it allows you to more explicitly pick the base point.

But the best way is to just draw the object centered from the very beginning!


> I keep going back and forth between Construct and Transform, I notice that there
> is a bit of room at the bottom of that section, any chance of having them both
> on screen at once?

I want to reserve that area for some future expansion.

Which Transform commands do you find yourself using the most often? I have some ideas that I want to try for version 2.0 that should make it easier to do some types of transforms without needing to go over there.

If you are frequently using a particular transform, it might help to set up a keyboard shortcut for it. Let me know if you want some help setting this up.


> For us jewellers Grid Snap is a boon, but when you get down small
> (1/10mm) you have to switch it off, I know someone suggested that a
> 1/10mm grid appear when you zoom up large , perhaps a flagged
> reminder on screen that this has happened?

I'm kind of wary about automatic changes to the grid, even with flagged reminders. It's kind of dangerous in a certain way because normally the grid gives you a distinct sense of the scale you are working on and lets you guarantee point placement at specific values, but if it changes just in response to view manipulations, you no longer have those guarantees.

One thing that you might find useful is a keyboard shortcut that would step the grid spacing up or down on a keystroke. Paul has a script for that here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=509.1

Also Petr has collected some other useful scripts here: http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/

Let me know if you need any help setting these scripts up.


> If I create a solid inside another but with a surface level with another , I find the
> smaller one hard to select, how should I do this?

Probably the easiest way is to hide the larger one.

Another way is to use the area select - this is the rectangle that you can use for selection when you click and drag in an empty area. If you drag starting from the right side and moving towards the left, you will get a dashed rectangle and anything that intersects the rectangle in any way will get selected. if you drag from the left going towards the right, you will get a solid rectangle and only things that are completely contained inside of it will get selected. You can use this "complete containment only" mode to capture a smaller object if you drag a rectangle that only contains it and not the larger object.

You can also sometimes use Select / Invert to help get a selection onto a difficult object as well - select everything else and then do Select / Invert and it will flip the selection.

- Michael