Hello Michael...few ideas for fast arch. modeling...
Have you maybe considered some optios for more easier archit. commands?
Like egsample instant drawing of vertical surfaces that could be defined as walls (you draw line that doesnt have to be extruded, its like it has immediatly its elevation), then maybe making holes for openings that doesnt have to be the usual way like in Rhino where you have to draw box then substrackt.
Also maybe to have a litlle parametrisation here available so when you have a hole 90x90 that you could easily transform it to 100x100 or 120x90...
Maybe also a profile libary available for instant drawing of window frames, where user can define its profile curve that would be sweeped along the edge of the openings, also possibility of saving its profile libary....Ideas keep pupming in:-)

Heres a small plugin for Lightwave that I saw in actions.
Its realy is a beautifull , unique and TURBO thing when it come for Arch modelling....
http://www.wtools3d.com/ (take a new features tour)
http://www.wtools3d.com/index.php?p=3&content=online_help
http://www.wtools3d.com/index.php?p=4&content=tutorials

If this could be in Moi, I think youll draw a lot of users to you.
I mean a lot!

Love this array system that it has!
Never seen anything better yet!
http://www.wtools3d.com/swf/tutorials/multiply/multiply.html

LWCAD really is a nice tool.
A friend of mine uses it a lot for building game props.
Personally (i own 2.1) i use it alot to quickly add some content to my Vue scenery.
Highly recommended.

Hi Kreten, these are a lot of great ideas!

It will be a while before I'll be able to act on any of these ones, but it is great to hear them coming in!

That is a really slick array tool they've got there, I wish I would have seen that before I finished up the ones in MoI... Maybe I will try to re-work those in V2 to be more like that.

- Michael

Hi,

i fully agree with JTB. Nothing more to say. :)

MfG
sk2k

O.k. Michael!
Just finish all the things you had in mind for the V1!
But I would definatly be glad if you have this in mind and maybe get it ready for V2.... maybe even sooner ;-)
If I come up with any new ideas Ill post them again here...

p.s. Im glad you showed good will:-)

Hi Edwin, I guess it is only plug-in for LightWave(?), what a pity... I have only given a pdf-manual once-over, but it looks fantastically.... -Petr

edit: real-time curve booleans.... wow... hmmm...

>>That is a really slick array tool they've got there. [...] Maybe I will try to re-work those in V2 to be more like that.

Personally, if there is a confusing area in MoI, it is the Array-Grid command. I feel it like very non-intuitive. Now, I rather draw a lines and create array using Array-Curve command instead; so I would appreciate if you made some changes...

Petr

I have been working with Lightwave (architectural viz) for many years now and LWCAD is a must have. And as always we've been following the development of new modellers. I must say allthough its in its very early stage I'm very enthousiastic about the approach. Especially the use of the construction lines. Without having to select a special command :)). Think this is a very promising app and hope to see more of this in the future (and hopefully some of the awesome LWCAD features ;) ) ....

Jos
www.trimagine.nl

Im starting here a little window frame experiment.
I created the outer shape of the window (rectangle) and a small profile shape.
Now the ideal thing would be when I sweep the profile curve around the rectangle to have a nice looking frame but I get the shape in the right corner:-(
I could avoid this by puting in each corner a profile shape and rotating it 45 deg. and then lofting but any way this could be made with this single command.

I tried this making In AmapiPro wich even beated the Rhinos workflow because you hadnt even need to rotate the profile shape 45 deg. just a sweep.
Any chace for MoI here to get in the lead?:-)

> Any chace for MoI here to get in the lead?:-)

Not for V1, I'm afraid - it will take some extra work to intersect and miter the corners for this type of a thing.

This thread mentions some work-arounds: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=297.1

The easiest method at the moment is to use 2 rails, and you can also place the shape away from the rails and use "auto-placement mode":






So that's a pretty easy workaround method.

For sweeping, if you have the sweep profiles placed so that they are outside of the bounding box of the rail curves, it will automatically move them into position - you can even do this with multiple profiles, just arrange them roughly left to right flat on the plane and it will space them evenly along the sweep rails for you. If the profiles are inside of the bounding box of the shape it will not re-position them and just take them as you have placed them.

So for many simple sweeps in MoI you don't need to bother to rotate or place the profile perpendicular to the rail, just draw it flat on the plane a little bit away from it and it does it for you - this works nicely for construction history too since it is easier to edit the profiles that are flat on the plane to get history updates...

- Michael

Hi Kreten. Rhino 3 will develop the 45 degree miters by sweeping a single profile curve along these rails. In R4, a 2-rail sweep will produce the frame as a single creased surface (point editable). It's not necessary to rotate profile curves 45 degrees to make the mitered joints in Rhino. So not sure where Amapi has any advantage... Or maybe you just meant to say not necessary to align the profile curve perpendicular to the rail curve (90 degrees)?... I prefer to draw the profile curve in place on the rail curve (perpendicular to the curve). It helps me visualize exactly the proportion of the two curves. Drawing a flat profile which will be swept in a vertical position along a rail which is away from my drawing space feels very disconnected to me. So i hope to see c-plane orientation tools in Moi soon...

jonah

> In R4, a 2-rail sweep will produce the frame as a single creased surface (point editable).

Hi Jonah, I couldn't seem to replicate this - is there a special setting you used to enable a single-creased-surface result in Rhino?

Over here when I do this type of 2-rail sweep in Rhino, it generates a polysurface split along the kinks, and trying to turn on control points results in a message: Cannot turn on points for polysurfaces.

One thing you might be interested in - the result of this 2 rail sweep in MoI remains point editable despite it being a polysurface. This is because MoI supports a feature where you can edit the control points of a polysurface if the joined edges of the polysurface are natural surface edges and have the same control point structure along the joined edge. This is convenient because the output of surfacing commands with kinked input curves generate such structures. Also for example a simple box is point editable in MoI.

- Michael

Rail revolve works for this case very well. You can rail revolve, and it will miter the corners

The LWCAD system is very similair to Blender's Array tool as well. You can define the copies to be transformed and twisted relative to each other, and even 'skin' them to make spirals. It's pretty spiffy.

> Personally, if there is a confusing area in MoI, it is the Array-Grid command.
> I feel it like very non-intuitive. Now, I rather draw a lines and create array
> using Array-Curve command instead; so I would appreciate if you made
> some changes...

Hi Petr, is there anything specific that you can pinpoint that makes it feel non-intuitive to you?

There really isn't very much to it... Number of copies, and then spacing by drawing a rectangle or box as the array cell size.

Is it because you don't get the kind of dynamic preview that you typically see? I had been a little hesitant to put in that type of preview here since it can generate a pretty large number of objects...

- Michael

Well, it's hard to remember what XYZ mean, is it screen relative, or relative to global coordinates? And sometimes, when picking, it's hard to remember which direction is which. Maybe there is some way you can display 'placeholders' to show how the grid is being laid out as we pick out the unit cell size?

> is there a special setting you used to enable a single-creased-surface result in Rhino? Over here when I do this type of 2-rail >sweep in Rhino, it generates a polysurface split along the kinks, and trying to turn on control points results in a message: Cannot >turn on points for polysurfaces.

Hi Michael. Are you referring to R3 ? In R4, all surfacing commands are able to output a single creased surface (loft, sweep, extrude, etc) unless they require capping to make it a solid (like extruding a planar curve). For example, the cylinder primitive is a polysurface. But you can loft 2 circles and 2 points located at their centers to produce a single surface cylinder, whose points can be turned on. I haven't changed any of my settings in Rhino.


>One thing you might be interested in - the result of this 2 rail sweep in MoI remains point editable despite it being a polysurface. >This is because MoI supports a feature where you can edit the control points of a polysurface if the joined edges of the >polysurface are natural surface edges and have the same control point structure along the joined edge. This is convenient >because the output of surfacing commands with kinked input curves generate such structures. Also for example a simple box is >point editable in MoI.

>- Michael

That's something i remember from a thread a few months ago. It's a really great feature, especially for people who patch model with untrimmed nurbs surfaces for export to animation programs. Or for playing around with architectural ideas, it could be very easy to sketch out a block model in a Frank Gehry style ...

jonah

> Are you referring to R3 ?

No, R4...


> In R4, all surfacing commands are able to output a single creased surface
> (loft, sweep, extrude, etc) unless they require capping to make it a solid
> (like extruding a planar curve).

I'm not seeing this - over here for example lofting between 2 rectangles with style = Normal and "Do not simplify" creates a polysurface made up of 4 surfaces, not a single surface with creases. I am running a 2 month old version - maybe they changed this recently?


> But you can loft 2 circles and 2 points located at their centers to produce
> a single surface cylinder, whose points can be turned on.

Yes, but that's a special case since the circles are G1 with no creases. G1 input curves will result in single surfaces. But try it with non-G1 curves such as rectangles, do you still get a single surface?

- Michael