Pilou,

I would think it's because offset would create a self intersecting curve for the 5th offset, to small a radius I think. Ideally, it would do as CorelDraw does on the free form shape (see video link above) but this would require a serious (time consuming) overall to the offset command, basically an all new command would be needed for that. If you take a look at the free form shape in the video, the offset command (as it is now) would fail a long way before it reach the center of the shape as CDraw does. It's a totally different creature then offset that would be required.

Thanks,
Felix

Does the offset work in any cplane?

Hi Felix, don't worry it's just because I've been away from my office for the day and so I just haven't been able to get to it yet.

It will not take me much time overall to do it once I get a chance.

- Michael

Hi Felix,

> I thought it would be just a case of repeating the offset command
> as many time as needed in a loop, just changing the offset distance
> a multiple of it each step but it could be more complicated then that.

Yup, that's what I almost have finished setting up, I just kind of got interrupted and have been out of my office for a bit, that's the only reason why it is taking extra time, not because the work itself is really too much.
- Michael

Hi Brian,

> Does the offset work in any cplane?

If the curve that is being offset is planar, offset will use the plane of the curve itself for the offset.

Otherwise if it's a 3D curve or if it's a line then the cplane can come into play with it.

- Michael

Hi Felix, I was able to finish cooking up the multi step offset method!

To install it, download the attached .zip file, then unzip it and there are 2 files - both of these files need to be copied into the \commands sub-folder inside of MoI's main installation folder.

That will then make a new command available to MoI called OffsetMultiStep . To trigger the command set up a new shortcut key and put in OffsetMultiStep as the command name.

To use it, select the curves you want to offset, then trigger the command using whatever shortcut key you set up, then you need to pick a point to which side you want to offset and then you can adjust options for the distance that will be used between each step and the number of steps:



Note that if you offset something that has tight bends in it by a distance larger than the bends, the offset will be trying to cross over itself, and it will try to figure out which portion to keep if Trim is enabled. There can be multiple pieces involved when that happens and it tries to keep the piece that is generally in the vicinity of the point that was picked for the offset side, so the placement of the "which side" point can be significant for that kind of situation. If you want to get all pieces you will need to turn the Trim option off and just get the raw results and then clean those up.

Hope this helps!

- Michael

Wonderful!

You can also press TAB and write OffsetMultiStep for call the function ;)

Very nice!

Wonderful Michael..

Thanks.

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

Michael,

sorry, it was my turn to be busy yesterday. It seems I won't be the only one to use this script after all. Nice examples of it's use guys!

Many thanks,
Felix

Added ;)
http://moiscript.weebly.com/offsetmultistep.html

Cool, Will take a look when I got back from work. :-)

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

Another feature I would like if possible is to offset multiple curves to the inside or to the outside.

Hi 3dcnc,

> Another feature I would like if possible is to offset
> multiple curves to the inside or to the outside.

You mean for this OffsetMultiStep plug-in? It actually does work with multiple curves already, just select all the curves you want to offset before running the command.

The only tricky part with multiple curves is that each curve determines which direction to offset by using the same point that you pick. It's easy to pick a point that will be on the outside of all curves, but because you pick just one point it can only be on the inside of one of them if you have all closed curves.

So if you want to offset to the inside you may need to use the "Both sides" checkbox so that offsets on both sides will be generated.

- Michael

Michael

This is cool - I assume this will make it into the next beta (so we don't have to download the script separately?)

Hi NightCabbage,

> This is cool - I assume this will make it into the next beta
> (so we don't have to download the script separately?)

No, no plans for that right now - it's normal for plug-ins like this to be separate from the main install.

In the future at some point I do want to overhaul the plug-in install mechanism though so that you can install a plug-in once into a central location and then have it available to new MoI versions without doing anything more.

But for now if you need extra functionality like this plug-in you need to download and install it.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Is there a central repository for all scripts? So that users can find and download them. On the resources page there is a link to some scripts, however, they are not necessarily up-to-date. For instance, the importpointfile script is not up-to-date. So I have been hosting it myself.

It would be nice if there was a place on the MoI website where all of the latest versions of all of the scripts were held. I have been assuming that your current method is to let the user find the latest scripts by searching the MoI forum.

Thanks,

Anthony

Hi anthony - the current script repository is on Petr's page here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/

The majority of scripts are listed there, there may be a few that are not up to date though.

In the future I do want to make an "official" centralized script repository but instead of having it as just a regular web page I want to make it a web service that you would connect to and browse from within MoI so that you could do something like click a button to install one of the scripts rather than needing to actually download it separately and install it manually.

I'm not sure yet exactly when that will happen though, hopefully at some point in v3. But it's possible it could get postponed if I get really focused on higher priority tasks like some kinds of new modeling tools.

- Michael

You can also find maybe some scripts here ;)

http://moiscript.weebly.com/