Hello everyone, MOI has a unique mix of 2d and 3d features and therefore it is useful in both spheres. I sometimes use it to prepare simplified models of scientific experiments and apparatus - recently I thought that instead of exporting to AI(and loosing the surface rendering and 3rd dimension - also intuitive highlighting and selection ) I would make my presentation within MOI. I'd like to know if its possible to hide the MOI interface to facilitate this application?



Thanks,

Ambimind

Hi Ambimind - there is a script available here which you can set up on a keyboard shortcut to toggle the regular UI panels on or off:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#FullScreen

- Michael

Super, thanks, link is full of other cool stuff!

BTW, I hope you won't mind me suggesting three things I think would speed up 2d work in MOI:
1 - Easy way to smooth out the "sketch" curve - I personally love the way "Autodesk Sketchbook Designer" does it : a small circle appears next to the curve(just drawn), dragging the perimeter smooths the curves, while clicking it switches between closest approximations/shape(straight line, arc, circle,etc).
2 - Snapping while using sketch curve(and ability to automatically join/extend based on snapped curve)
3 - Double click to put curves into edit point, double click again to add point. Right click or double click away from curve to exit edit mode.

Thanks,

Ambimind

Hi Ambimind, unfortunately #1 and #2 are pretty difficult to implement. #1 is probably quite a bit of work, which would definitely make sense if the sketch curve command was the main way to draw anything in MoI, but since it's more like one of many different commands instead of the exclusive way to draw things, it's a bit hard to justify sinking a significant amount of development time refining it.

I've tried to think about how to do #2 before, and the tricky thing is when there would be a kind of a sudden jump from the snapped point to the current mouse position - that would tend to create some strange bumps in the snapped areas. It could be possible to try some things like a type of blended "easing out" from the snapped point instead of going just directly from the snap to the actual mouse location, but again that's something that would probably require quite a bit of development time to get working well.

So the feasibility of those is not particularly high, at least not anytime soon.

For #3 - double click can tend to open up some other difficulties when the double click action does not naturally extend what the single click action does.

Double click to enter edit mode is probably feasible - double click to exit it less so, because a single click is already used for selection, so to make double click do something totally different than the regular selection mechanism would probably mean stuff like having a pause and not doing selection until I knew whether a double click happened or not - that kind of stuff tends to be awkward. That's one reason why I have just avoided double click in general.

Right-click to turn off edit points is also probably not workable because right-click is already used for the different purpose of repeating the last used command.

One note though - you can currently use the Escape key to turn off edit points as an alternative to the Show pts button.

So anyway, double click could be a possible thing but it's not easy to just put any function on the double click action unless it is a more natural extension to what happens with the single click already....

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you for such a detailed explanation. Reading it makes me realize the incredible difficulties you face in making something easy(ironically)/intuitive to use. Not doubt the complex juggling act(many simultaneous considerations) could only be dealt with by a mind who has spent years in careful consideration and testing - and thereby allowing for a large amount of automatic operation.
I will certainly be aware of this next time I think to make a suggestion.

On the point of RMB to disable edit points: Currently I select a curve, enable edits points -> move points -> then right-click to disable them. For this to work I must not activate any other tool before the 2nd RMB. Its very convenient and 'natural' since one tends to edit one curve at a time. My suggestion on double clicking was made with this workflow in mind.
I can see your point however and have dedicated some of the extra buttons on my Logitech mouse, to speed up curve editing.

Regards,

Ambimind