Hi Petr, thanks for the feedback,


> RotateImage :: The circles, which represent planes for rotating an image, could
> be dashed like construction lines.

This is set up for the next beta.


> There could also be a way of reseting the image into the basic state (i.e. circles
> are parallel/perpendicular to cplanes).

Any ideas on a good way to trigger this? Maybe clicking the rotate icon again while inside tri-axis rotate mode?

For background images it is pretty easy to just delete the current one and draw a new one that is aligned to the cplanes again. But there needs to be some way to do this before these grips could be applied to regular objects. The rotation stuff on the images is mostly a test bed for how this type of frame editing could work for on regular objects for a future version.

The nice thing about this dual-mode rotation mechanism is that it will provide for simple 2D illustration type scaling and rotation within the top view (it is nice to be able to use the top view as if it was a 2D illustration program), but a full 3-axis rotation is easy to get as well.

I've also thought a bit about maybe displaying a center point while in tri-axis mode and letting you drag on the center point to move the center of rotation elsewhere, eventually.

- Michael

Hi Petr, almost forgot this second part:

> Blend :: When I make a blend (G1, G2) between two curves then join this three curves
> into one and extrude it (or use it as a path or profile for sweeping), the result is
> polysurface rather then smoothly deformable surface. Is it useful? (Yes, I can use
> AddPt and Delete commands for removing a kink from curve before extruding...)

I don't know about useful or not, but that's basically how things have to work to get exact results.

MoI doesn't try to fuse G1 or higher segments together into single curve pieces when doing an extrude, for example. This is different than what you might be used to from Rhino - Rhino will fuse G1 or higher segments together into single curves when extruding, but this actually tends to be a source of problems, for example: http://news2.mcneel.com/scripts/dnewsweb.exe?cmd=article&group=rhino&item=251873&utag= , it can also be inconvenient for other situations, like it makes it more difficult to explode or ExtractSrf your model into individual faces for low level work. So I consider it a feature that MoI does not auto-fuse G1 segments together.

Also, even though Rhino fuses G1 segments together, that does not equate to "smoothly deformable surface" - the only general way to fuse segments together is by introducing a "fully multiple knot" which becomes a corner point if you drag it. So "fusing" does not equal "smoothing".

In general making a smoothly deformable surface out of multiple segments will involve some type of refitting or resampling process to reconstruct the curve without internal corner points (fully multiple knots). This involves small deviations from the original shape, probably not very expected for extrude, but probably more feasible for sweep profiles, especially profiles other than the start/end ones.

So basically if you want a smoothly deforming single surface from an extrude, you will need to do the addpt/delete stuff to provide a single smoothly deforming curve first before extrusion.

For extrude, the structure of the input curves exactly dictates the structure of the resulting surface. I think this is the most expected result - each curve segment = one surface.

- Michael

> The best MoI so far !!!
> I see V1.0 coming very soon...

Thanks JTB!

Things are looking in pretty good shape now with the increased stability for these particular complex high-calculation commands.

Although I'm sure that there will be a few other crash bugs to fix up in other areas, I think that this new version should push things into a production-ready level for stability. So that's pretty important for being ready to release!

My plan is to add some other new features through to the end of March. I'm shooting for that cut-off date, probably at that point I will take whatever I've got and stop adding new stuff for a while and only do bug fixes as it gets polished up and ready for the full V1 release.


By the way, I think you previously mentioned that it was awkward using the grid array to do just a single column in Z?

The new "Dir" array should be easier for this type of thing now.

- Michael

Hey Petr, one other thing -

Previously you mentioned the problem where Fillet remembers the last used radius and applies it immediately when you run the command again, which was inconvenient if it took a while to finish.

With the new release you can now enter a new radius after starting the command, which will automatically interrupt the current calculation and start a new one going with your new radius.

So that problem should be solved now!

- Michael

Hi Linker,

> The new features of the filleting tool are great, how about an option to select
> a custom profile curve? (so that the fillet works similarly to Sweep)

This would definitely be cool but it would be pretty difficult for me to set up right now - the blending stuff was easier because the geometry library already had things in place to do it. To do a custom profile curve I'd have to do quite a lot of new code.

There may be some other pretty big complications too - for a normal fillet, the distance between the edges of the fillet surface may widen or contract along its length on squiggly surfaces. For something that can be calculated like an arc, this forms a longer arc or shorter arc but of the same radius. A custom profile would probably be quite a bit different, in that it wouldn't work very well to just trim out a part of it like you can trim out an arc of a circle.

The other part that is complex is rounding at corner junctures, especially with more than 2 edges. This tends to require a bunch of specialized shaping slightly different than the regular profile, this may be really difficult for custom profiles...

Just doing the top bevel on a simple extrude doesn't really run into these issues, but the more general case of any edges does.


> The new Units feature is propably very nice for those who need it, it would be even
> better if the changes were reflected in the viewport grid. (Inches and feet would
> have thicker lines for every 6 and 12 units instead of every 5 and 10, the cm
> display would subdivide to mm when zoomed far enough in etc.)

I think the way to solve this will be through template file support eventually. By this I mean being able to have a set of pre-saved starting files that have different settings all set up in them, like units + grid combos, etc... There would be something like a File / Template command similar to File / New (or possibly built into File/New), except it would let you pick a starting template file out of a set of different saved ones.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Actually, I solved this issue before releasing last beta.
I just replaced the attribute in the "html" file - "style="persist:true;" - with - style="persist:false;" .... hehe...

But it is more convenient now. Thanks for the side-effect... haha...

Petr

> I just replaced the attribute in the "html" file - "style="persist:true;" -
> with - style="persist:false;" .... hehe...

:) It is pretty cool that all the UI files are accessible there and easily editable so that stuff like this is possible!

- Michael

>>This is set up for the next beta.

Thanks. We will see how it looks...

>>Any ideas on a good way to trigger this?
>>Maybe clicking the rotate icon again while inside tri-axis rotate mode?

It sounds well. But now it is unfeasible to click it....


Petr

You have brought me round to revise my attitude..... ! hehe.... -Petr

> It sounds well. But now it is unfeasible to click it....

You mean because one of the wheels gets the click instead? I would be able to change this so that the icon took precedence over the wheels if you are within a short distance of the icon.

But it may be overloading a bit too much stuff on that icon though... but nothing else is particularly coming to mind

- Michael

>>You mean because one of the wheels gets the click instead?

Yep...

>>But it may be overloading a bit too much stuff on that icon though

Well, I agree with you that for Image there is no need for this handling badly. So I will try to have a think about this trickiness.

Petr

I have noticed some weird thing while handling image! I am planing to go into and give a feedback. But now, I have to start working... grrrr... -Petr

> And a wish: It´s posible to keep the same distance when I´m drawing a polyline?
> If not, this is my wish. Anyway....I think that it´s not a very useful feature, but I
> was trying to draw a polyline like that, and it was very tedious to write the distance
> in each segment. :-)

Hi David, this isn't possible right now. Normally something a bit specialized like this will probably be done using some kind of a custom script instead of adding it in as a part of the regular UI.

I've added some new scriptable methods for the next beta that will make it possible to set the current distance or angle constraint from a script, which will make it possible to do something like set up a keyboard shortcut for "d" that sets the distance you want. You would still have to hit d for every segment, but that seems easier than typing in the number for each one.

One quick note for the current beta version - you don't have to click in that box each time before typing your distance, you can just type the distance in immediately and hit enter. That might save you a click if you are clicking on the little distance box each time right now.

- Michael

New dutch translation can be downloaded here:

Kind regards,
Edwin

Hi Michael,

I pledged some weirdnesses about Edit/Image command. So here you are...

When I want to place an image, I pick corner point first and then I can choose four basic quadrants for placing opposite corner point. The image changes location in accordance with moving cursor to the different quadrant while the first picked point stays in place. The image aren't changed itself.

After placing image I can scale it by moving a grip.
Well, when I grab the grip, the "shifting point" appears and besides moving this point (it leads to changing size of image) I can shift it along the adjacent sides. As soon as I bring "shifting point" closer to opposite grip enough, it results in mirroring image! Cool or funny? It depends... I guess it can be useful.

Another nice thing relating to 2D rotation. If I click and drag on rotation grip, I am able to snap certain angle according to setting snap angle option in the straight snap options dialog window. The zero axis is always oriented from the midpoint of image towards rotation grip(?).

Last issue is about the "3-wheel rotation gizmo". Clicking on the wheel in case of the wheel is represented by line (i.e. the wheel is perpendicular to cplane) leads to freezing the image, seemingly. There is need to move the mouse cursor to another view and click somewhere or press Esc key to enable further handling. I don't think it is a bug, however one could just be surprised what has happened.

Petr

Hi Petr, thanks for the additional image feedback!

> it results in mirroring image! Cool or funny? It depends... I guess it can be useful.

This is intentional - is the part that seems odd to you that the behavior is a bit different from the original image placement? I thought about not mirroring it on scale for a bit, but I think that scaling is slightly different than the original image placement. The idea is that once you are scaling it is good to lock the opposite corner in place, which means doing a mirror when you drag to the other side.

I think that during scaling having picked a corner to drag really identifies a particular corner and opposite anchor point, but I think of the original placement as defining more an area on the screen and not so much having the first pick automatically associated with the lower-left corner.


> Clicking on the wheel in case of the wheel is represented by line (i.e. the
> wheel is perpendicular to cplane) leads to freezing the image, seemingly.

Aha, good catch on this one, I consider this one to be a bug. I've tuned this up for the next beta so that it will work when dragging on an edge-on circle like this, it will behave as if you were dragging on the half of the circle closer to you.

- Michael

This is intentional - is the part that seems odd to you that the behavior is a bit different from the original image placement?

No, no... I was just wondering since this feature wasn't announced in a realease notes. -Petr

Japanese language file for new beta

Hi Michael,

>>I've added some new scriptable methods for the next beta that
>>will make it possible to set the current distance or angle constraint
>>from a script, which will make it possible to do something like set
>>up a keyboard shortcut for "d" that sets the distance you want.
>>You would still have to hit d for every segment, but that seems
>>easier than typing in the number for each one.

Well, how can we set and call this method from within moi.ini?

Petr