A new v3 beta (version Oct-25-2011) is now available for download here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm , also linked to from the download page on the main web site.

Actually as mentioned on some other discussion threads it's been available for a week already and I'm only just now getting the release notes in order.

Release notes:

New Twist command (Transform > Deform > Twist, no icon yet) for deforming objects by twisting them around an axis line. Some examples in this forum thread:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4614.1

New "Projective" option for Flow which can help for applying objects on to a localized area of a target object more like a decal rather than covering the entire surface like regular Flow. See here for a description:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4656.7

Updated Flow to pay attention to where you click on each surface to control how to match the results up - you click near the end of an edge on each surface and UVs will be flipped or swapped as needed to make those areas aligned, see this post for some more description:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4442.24

Added a "Flip surface normal" checkbox option to Flow so you can flip the result in the vertical surface normal direction if it is reversed from what you need.

Updated STL export for object names - if there is a single object being written to the STL file and it has a name, that name will be written as the object label in the file instead of just the generic "OBJECT".

New construction line snap plane feature - you can now make a "quick snap plane" by drawing 2 construction lines that share the same start point. Then when you snap on to that start point you can draw planar shapes like a circle from center point or rectangle from center and it will align perpendicular to those 2 crossing construction lines. It's also possible to use this to get a vertical straight snap line along that perpendicular as well. Some discussion in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3628.207

Updated LWO export with an option for LightWave v10 style vertex normals - it seems that with LightWave v10 LW expects to see normals reversed in direction from LW 9.6 used. So now there are options for storing normals for Modo, LightWave 9.6 or LightWave 10, they each expect to see the normals in a slightly different coordinate system.

Updated scene browser text label display - clipped text so that a long text name won't overlap underneath the selection indicator area unless the selection indicator is going to be empty.


Fixed a bug in curve-to-curve Flow where it didn't work correctly unless both curves were in the world x/y plane.

Fixed a bug where the bounding box was not computed correctly for some kinds of curves imported from .ai files.

Fixed a bug where sliders did not work properly if the system locale used a comma as the decimal point separator.

Fixed a bug where an ignorable assert warning could pop up for some intersection object snap cases.

Fixed a regression bug in the geometry library that was causing some cases of "On surface" object snap to fail on some surfaces of revolution.

Fixed a regression bug in the geometry library that could cause extrusion to fail of planar surfaces that were actually made up of numerous control points instead of being simple planes.

Fixed a bug in accurate bounding box calculation on some kinds of surfaces that have an outwards flaring shape to them.

Fixed a problem where you couldn't use JPEG images in the UI, you could only use PNG. Now you can use any of PNG, JPEG, or GIF for images in any custom HTML UI.

Fixed a crash bug where running out of memory in one particular spot in mesh calculation would crash instead of giving the "Insufficient memory" warning message.

Fixed a bug where the previous window position was incorrectly still used with a different monitor arrangement when moving a laptop between docking stations, bug reported in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4244.1

Fixed a bug with filtering on multi-style solids not working as expected reported in the forum here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4438.6



There's also now a page on the wiki where I'll be gathering all the v3 release notes in one place in addition to posts here in the forum: http://moi3d.com/wiki/V3Beta there's also a link to it from the main Resources page.


- Michael

Thanks for taking the time Michael. I'm really excited about the new snap function.

Here's a couple of examples of the new construction line temporary plane snap.

This is a new snap that will kick in when you create 2 construction lines with the same starting point. Then when you snap a point on to that crossing location they will form a temporary automatic construction plane.

Here's an example for drawing a rectangle from center point in the 3D view, this is creating one construction line in the plane and one coming off vertically from the plane, then when placing the rectangle's center point at that spot the rectangle is aligned to the plane formed by those construction lines:





Here's another example in the 3D view, with a line and a point at some arbitrary angle, not in any world x/y/z plane. This is using the line command and by dragging out 2 construction lines from the point that then enables getting a straight snap along the surface normal of the temporary plane:




In some cases this may be quicker than setting the cplane since creating construction lines is so easy (just hold the mouse button down and drag to make one, no other type of activation needed) and since the construction lines will automatically disappear when the command finishes so there is not any resetting step needed.

If you're going to do more than one thing in that plane then you would still want to set the full cplane there instead, since that will persist until you reset it.

This new mode is only activated for something that has its base point starting right on that crossing juncture - if you need to do something like draw in the plane a little bit off to the side or something like that you need to set the cplane to do that. You can use this crossing cline step as a way to align the cplane as well though, if you set it up then place the cplane origin at that crossing location the cplane z axis will start out aligned to that normal also.


- Michael

Thank you for implementing my request!!

You're welcome ed, I hope that comes in handy!

Please let me know if it does not seem to behave like you were thinking.

- Michael

Looks great Michael. Thanks for the new version.
I'll play with it and let you now when I found strange behavior.

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

It works really nice, the only difference is I imagined it with more visual feedback like a grid appearing. I think that can help you for example if you want to use the grid snap with the new cplane.

That new cplane feature is so awesome and clever ! Thanks :)

Hi ed,

> It works really nice, the only difference is I imagined it
> with more visual feedback like a grid appearing.

The problem I would see with that, is that it could really surprise someone who was only creating construction lines for some other purpose.

I can't be sure that in every case that you create 2 crossing construction lines that you also want to completely change the entire grid after that.

What if for example someone makes 2 crossing construction lines at the end of the curve to put out some tangent and perpendicular extension lines but then still wants to draw a freeform curve with some of the interior points of the curve aligned to the current grid?

- Michael

I must translate that as soon as possible !

Done on the French Forum just now copy past to the Wiki :)

I see. For new users it can be confusing, but in the case you mention above if you know what happen when you make two clines from the same point you can just make the second cline from another point to the start of the first. But you know better than I what is better.

Hi everybody!

Just a question. Is there the possibility to have more options on "line styles" (i.e. line thickness and pattern) on new V3 version?
I think it's very important such an option.

Cheers

<< Just a question. Is there the possibility to have more options on "line styles" (i.e. line thickness and pattern) on new V3 version?

You can since the V1 ;)

http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=1049.17 (scroll)

Hi miquik,

> Just a question. Is there the possibility to have more
> options on "line styles" (i.e. line thickness and pattern)
> on new V3 version?
> I think it's very important such an option.

Do you mean more choices for some of the current settings like the line style for the grid display?

Or are you talking about a way to apply different line styles to shapes that you have drawn?

I do want to implement a line style mechanism to be able to apply different styles to your objects but I'm not sure right now if that will happen in v3 or not.

- Michael

Hi Michael,
I'm talking about apply different line styles to shapes. I'd like to use your software for produce "technical drawing" (for "end user manual") in my company and for me it's very important to have different line style (i.e. silhouette edges, line patterns, etc). Also filling surface with "hatch style" will be great.

Do you think it will be possible? Maybe in the future in version 4.0? :-)

Cheers

Hi miquik, yes I would like to get to that point but it's really hard to know exactly when it will happen. V4 is far enough out that saying anything about it would be just random guesses...

There are kind of several stages of things that need to happen before even having line styles to make technical drawing production work well, one of them is generating hidden line drawings which I want to try and work on for v3.

- Michael

Yes, I understand your point and I agree with you that transform your (great) product in a REAL technical drawing software would require a huge modification.
It would be great, but my request is somehow simplier. For me it's enough to be able to change manually line style and hatching to simulate silhouette edge and hidden lines.
We currently do in this way (using autocad 2d for 3d drawings!).

Hi miquik,

> It would be great, but my request is somehow simplier.
> For me it's enough to be able to change manually line style
> and hatching to simulate silhouette edge and hidden lines.

Right, but what would you then do with your model in MoI that had lines styles and hatching just only visible on the screen, just look at it and nothing else?

Probably there are various other feature areas that go along with that, like generating image output and printing, are you really sure that simply changing the line style only inside the viewport alone would really get you what you need?

The next step for this area I think will be making it easier to generate a hidden-line vector drawing which will then make it easier to use MoI in combination with a 2D program for doing the styles and hatching. At some point I do want to have all that stuff included directly in MoI itself at least at a basic level but I think that it's a much larger amount of work and involves several intertwined features to a bigger level than what you may really be thinking...

- Michael

Notes about the V3 inside Wiki : done ;)
http://moi3d.com/wiki/Notes_au_sujet_de_la_V3