That's very helpful! I didn't know you could specify a distance for an offset or shell that way... Here's another idea based on whay you have going already: simply let the user set a own Min/Max slider on the fly. Instead of the two clicks defining a set distance which is applied immediately, the two clicks define the Min (always 0) and the Max. Then as one slides between the two points, the offset, shell or fillet shrinks and grows.

Anyway, just a thought. Being able to pick a distance in the viewport definitely gets one in the ballpark for finer tuning with the keypad. Thanks!

Hi Justin - that same thing (pick 2 points for distance) also works for fillet and chamfer by the way.

Re: Slider - I've had a couple of thoughts along this same line. I was thinking that once you have a distance (I guess I could default to 1.0 instead of no default, especially now that you can cancel and update parameters dynamically) I could put a couple of grips on the model, along some surface normal lines.

If you grabbed on one of those grips you could drag it and it would be another way of tweaking the distance - the current "distance between any 2 points" method would still work if you clicked somewhere not next to one of those grips.

But it is going to be a while before I'll be able to experiment with this.

- Michael

Curve booleans with open curves have proved to be pretty challenging, but I'm getting there.. Just finished difference. (note that this is for the next beta, not the current one).

Given this initial setup, with a grid of simple line segments and a closed region:



Doing a boolean difference with lines difference closed region gives this:



Basically just automatic trimming of the lines.

But somewhat more interesting is the closed region difference the lines:



This takes the lines and sort of imprints them into the closed region to form a bunch of new diced up closed regions (shown slightly separated for illustration).

Still have a some work left to do on the other operators for open curves though.

- Michael

> Must be a little headache for code that :)

:) Yes...


> Some aeras have some priority to other?

For closed regions it works like extrude - a closed area that is contained inside of another outline will become a hole inside the outline.


> Order of selection make some differrence?

It's not supposed to...


- Michael

Michael,
One feature that would be nice is that when a vector is highlighted, the dimensions would show up somewhere. Possibly in the same area that shows the dimensions when drawing them?
When I work with many small circles, etc. it sometimes becomes difficult to remember what the dimensions are.

Hi Michael,

Are you sure MoI's users will be able to learn all those boolean stuff? What about analogous command to Rhino's _Boolean2Objects?

Petr

> Are you sure MoI's users will be able to learn all those boolean stuff?

Well, there are no additional commands so there is not too much to learn - there are just more interactions available between different types of objects with the same commands.

I have probably spent a bit too much time struggling with the curve booleans with open curves though... But it is pretty cool and it's another thing that I'm not sure if anything else out there can do.


> What about analogous command to Rhino's _Boolean2Objects?

I believe this command was created in Rhino due to people getting confused about doing booleans with open surfaces and having the result be different depending on the surface normal orientation. That means that you need to be aware in advance of your normal direction and possibly flip it with the Dir command before doing the boolean - well a lot of people don't know about doing that part in advance and get surprised by results different than they intended when using open surfaces, so this was a fairly frequently asked question.

With Boolean2Objects, it will step through different surface normal orientations for open surfaces, one by one, so you don't have to worry about the normal directions in advance of doing the command.

In MoI I have solved this in a different way - when you do a boolean using a surface, MoI will just generate a couple of different objects for you and if you don't want one you can just delete it. I think this is easier to understand, and it is yet another instance of building more stuff into a single command rather than introducing an additional specialized command.

As another benefit it works well to handle multiple surfaces in one shot, as in this previous example:




In contrast, Boolean2Objects can only handle well, 2 objects at a time...


For solid/solid booleans, the regular operations are well defined - I don't really see why it is necessary to have a separate command that steps through all the different possibilities for this, just pick the proper operation at the start and you're done.

- Michael

Hi Ken,

> One feature that would be nice is that when a vector is highlighted,
> the dimensions would show up somewhere. Possibly in the same
> area that shows the dimensions when drawing them?

What I have been thinking of for this is to have an "object properties" panel that appears in the top portion of the side bar, where command options normally go when you are running a command. Somewhere on there would be a way to see probably width and height of an object, and some additional information for certain special objects like the length of a line or the radius of a circle.

However, I have don't expect to have time to work on this until after V1 is finished.

- Michael

Ok, making more progress. Maybe I'll be ready by tonight.

I've decided to make Union do this:






Or another one:





- Michael

First result is for help the klutzy people :)
Is that work for curve lines too on a same plan?
And for lines not in the same plan? (but with commun points)

Your second result is for mad geometrician :)
Are you sure that you obtain that from your previous inclined grid?
You have moved or erase something?

Hi Pilou,

> Is that work for curve lines too on a same plan?

Yes - all of these curves were on the same plane.


> And for lines not in the same plan? (but with commun points)

Nope, this will only work for curves that are all on one common plane.


> You have moved or erase something?

Yes sorry I forgot to mention - I moved a couple of pieces to illustrate that the results are all closed loops, not just separate line segments.

- Michael

OK. So friendly tutorial designed to bring all boolean stuff into the open might be enough.
I am still not sure if the result of boolean curves will be predictable easily, though. We will see after releasing new beta...

Petr

Struggling a bit with a few remaining bugs for open curve handling. I'll release the beta tomorrow with some of these bugs still in it, some of them may be hard to fix for V1.

- Michael

I think you can wait till Monday... -Petr

I'm pretty close... It should be a bit later on today.

Ok, looks like the major problems have been solved - I'm building a new release right now, won't be much longer.

Hi Michael,

You just gave us an incredible beta and here I'm already coming with feature suggestions... Users are really cruel don't you think ! ;-)

So, what about fillets with variable radii. Can this be a V.2 feature ? Not only Nurbs modeler have it (Amapi, Rhino), but it's also present in some poly modelers like Hexagon and in my opinion this would be a cool option in MoI too.

Hi Bernard, yes I do expect to be able to have variable radius fillets for V2. The geometry library that I'm using supports them, I just have not had time to do a user interface for them for V1.

- Michael

Just a suggestion :)
After the the special intersection boolean (Mars 9) the "new merge" :)
It's not possible to "develop automaticaly on a line" the objects created ? Something like the "line" of the "Array Dir" !
That will be terrific of simplicity and so effective!