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

There's a new method moi.ui.getActivePointPicker() which will return to you the pointpicker which is currently waiting for a point, or null if none is currently waiting.

Then there is a new setDistanceConstraint() and setAngleConstraint() which is available on a point picker.

So this for instance will set it up so that pushing D will set a distance constraint of 10 units. So to create a polyline with a lot of 10 unit segments, set this up and then push D after picking each point.

[Shortcut Keys]
D=script:var pointpicker = moi.ui.getActivePointPicker(); if ( pointpicker != null ) pointpicker.setDistanceConstraint(10.0);

- Michael

Hi David,


>>And a wish: It´s posible to keep the same distance when I´m drawing a polyline?

I hope you are still looking for command that allow you to draw a polyline with the same length of segments... If not... hehe..




- Create \user subdirectory in the ..\MoI beta Mar-9-2006\commands directory
- Unzip the file "CustomPolyline.zip" into the new \user directory
- If you use a keyboard along with a mouse, you can define a shortcut - go to your moi.ini (C:\Documents and Settings\[your user name]\Application Data\Moi\moi.ini) and add a keyboard shortcut in the [Shortcut Keys] section - for example:
Alt+P=user/CustomPolyline
- If you use a tablet, you can move the file "HelpMenu.htm" from \user directory to ..\MoI beta Mar-9-2006\ui (actually you have to let the file overwrite). You will be able to launch the command from help menu, then.


After calling this new command you can choose from three constraint mode for drawing a polyline - distance constraint, angle constraint or both of them. If you don't want to use one of them, you just type 0 (zero) or delete a value.


Let's hope that there aren't serious bugs...It appears to work fine.


Petr

Maybe you must copy past this post also in the thread new beta of 9 mars !