Michael,

I have a huge model (by now the Moi file is 230mb) and now a contractor asked me to change the origin / base point in the Drawing to something we can measure on site.

If I move ALL the Stuff I have at once my Computer keeps freezing or at least MoI is not doing anything anymore. (the RAM usage goes up to 1,8gb and nothing is happening anymore; there are lots of extrudes with the rail splines still there to allow easy manipulation so they have to be recalculated and I guess this just takes ages...)

As there are loads of things that I don't want to move by hand piece by piece - is there a command or tool that allows me to change the world Coordinate system to a point that I can define?

hi there

you could use a CPlane(View -> Cplane). Just execute the command and set a new origin by using the Orientation picker

http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference5.htm#cplane
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference11.htm#orientationpicker

"Setting a global CPlane will also affect x,y,z coordinate point entry, with the coordinates evaluated in the CPlane's coordinate system instead of in world coordinates. For example typing in 0,0,0 will place a point at the CPlane's origin instead of the world origin. You can prefix typed in points with a w (for example w5,2,1) to enter in a world coordinate point instead when a CPlane is active. The x,y,z point coordinate readout in the bottom toolbar will also show the location of the mouse in CPlane coordinates instead, with a "c" being displayed in front of them to indicate they are CPlane coordinates and not world coordinates."

cheers,
marco

how would that change the coordinates on an exported drawing? everything would stay where it is as the Cplane thing only affects the readout, or am I mistaken? That would mean I still have to move everything by hand as the client is importing this stuff and cannot read the .3dm files... to make sure everything is imported in the correct place I'd have to move it.
That's what I'd like to avoid.

Hi macray, possibly a history update is taking that extra time, or another possibility is that the creation of the undo records so that you can undo that Move is taking the time. If the undo records bumped you up so that you ran out of regular RAM and were swapping to disk that could slow things down quite a bit.

If you set the cplane that will allow you to use that cplane's origin as the new origin for typed in coordinates for drawing objects, but it won't change how the file is imported into other applications.

One method you could try is the "ImportPart" command which is activated by a right-click on the File > Import button.

The ImportPart command opens a file and also allows you to place the location and orientation of the contents of the file at that time as well.

Start a fresh MoI instance, and then right-click on ImportPart and choose your model that you want to relocate. Then at the "Pick origin point" prompt type in the coordinate that you want to offset to (if you saved the file with a cplane set in it, then it will be placing the cplane origin point, otherwise it will be relocating the 0,0,0 point since the default cplane is at 0,0,0). Then the second step allows you to adjust the rotation of the import, the prompt says "Adjust axis orientation" - just push Enter here to keep the default orientation. That should probably help because it won't trigger history updates and it won't cause an undo record to be created.

- Michael

That worked great!