Hi Rich_Art,

> Would it be best to model in real world scales?? I know
> Vray works best when using real world scales.

The best thing for MoI is to model at a scale that avoids either too large or too small numeric values.

It doesn't really matter what physical scale it's at, you want to avoid doing things like generating fillets that use a radius of 0.00001 units. It doesn't matter if the units are miles, or millimeters, it's that large or small numeric value itself that you don't want to use.

So if your object has very large or very small numeric values in its real world scale then you would not want to use real world scale for that particular model.

But for a lot of things the real world scale that you would typically use can be good - like things of the size that you might find on your desk you would probably in the real world measure with centimeter units and that will yield not too large or small numeric values so that's good.

If you start to see numbers that you're trying to use that have a whole bunch of zeros in them on either side of the decimal point, then that's the kind of thing that you want to avoid and you want to work with such things at a scale where you're seeing numbers more like 50.2 rather than 0.000000052

-Michael

hi all

Michael : i quickly tried what you said with no result. this is the workflow i don't get. what are the different step to accomplish what you said ?
sorry for so many basics questions. i learn very slowly :)
can you point me where are the informations about the edit frame. for example when i tried to squish it until i see the "snap" and i want to go back to the original position i can't snap to it. i have to undo to have the original back.
i have to go for now, i'll come back tonight for more test.

thanks again
Laurent

@Laurent
Le cadre de Modification (Edit Frame) doit être coché dans le Menu Options/ View
Il suffit ensuite de cliquer à répétition sur l'un des 4 angles pour choisir son axe de référence par rapport auquel la modification va avoir lieue
(milieu ou extrémité)
De se mettre dans la vue concernée, et de prendre un de ces angles et le déplacer
Quand l'item Flat (Plat) apparaît tous les points sont aplatis sur l'axe choisi ;)
Suivant les "Snaps" souhaités il peut être bon de décocher l'accroche à la grille, aux axes, ou aux objets
Oui on ne peut revenir facilement, sur la position de départ, on le relâche n'importe où et un simple Undo ou CTRL + Z fera l'affaire ! :)

L'utilisation du cadre de déformation n'est pas toujours pertinent!
Il vaut mieux par exemple s'il on veut allonger une forme par rapport à une autre utiliser l'outil Scale (Taille) 1D
Comme cela on pourra utiliser les lignes d'aide pour se caler sur un objet à une position quelconque!
Un fois la fonction chosie (ici Taille) Les lignes d'aide peuvent se dessiner avant le premier clic, après le premier clic et avant le dernier clic !

Hi Laurent,

> can you point me where are the informations about the edit frame.

Check here:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference11_French.htm#editframe

There's a lot of information like this covered in the help file reference section, Pilou even made a translation into French!

The reference section of the help file is here:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference_French.htm


> what are the different step to accomplish what you said ?

It went like this - I changed the units to centimeters and focused on this object here:



I deleted the side wall parts, leaving only the top and bottom surfaces:



I had previously tried to build a planar surface by drawing in some new lines between the corners but that failed, which indicates that the ends of those surfaces are not fully planar with one another.

So one way to fix that is to turn on surface control points (Edit > Show pts), and select these control points:



Then switch to the top view which will look like this:



Now it is possible to edit those points to flatten them down to all be on one exact same plane rather than having them kind of slightly jittered around like they were previously. To do that grab the corner grip of the edit frame (the edit frame are the corner grips that show up around the current selection that allow you to scale or rotate it):



And then drag that down to flatten the frame, there will be a "flat" snap that engages at the collapsed point, like this:



If you don't get any flat snap then it means that it was already totally flat. But your object here was not, that's one of the things that was likely causing some of the fillet problems too.


> for example when i tried to squish it until i see the "snap"
> and i want to go back to the original position i can't snap to
> it. i have to undo to have the original back.

Sorry, I'm not really understanding this part.

If you drag something to move it, it is normal that you don't have a snap available at it's old previous position, if that old position was just out in space somewhere with nothing there anymore.

If you want to get back to some spot later on you generally need to place something there to serve as a marker, a point object can work well for that (Draw curve > More > Point).

Hope this helps!

- Michael

Thanks Michael.
I never use large/small numbers. Mostly between 10 and 100.

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

merci Pilou :)

Michael : i was trying to do the manipulation with the object as a solid. that's why i was having troubles.
we can "only" show points for surfaces and curves ?
it works as expected now :)

again i want to thank you for your support since i'm not even a customer for now, but i sure will be very soon, no more doubts.

Laurent

@Laurent
Présentement on ne peut voir que les points de contrôle de tout objets, volumes surfaces et courbes!
Et évidemment les points chauds quand on passe dessus!

Hi Laurent,

> Michael : i was trying to do the manipulation with the
> object as a solid. that's why i was having troubles.
> we can "only" show points for surfaces and curves ? <...>

Yup, that's correct, except in special cases like with a box solid, since for a simple box case every surface inside the box shares control point locations with every other surface.

In most solids the surface control points do not necessarily align with one another at common edges - that's because edges are often formed by boolean operations which means that they are trim curves that are marking areas of a surface as holes or cut away parts.

Basically when you do a boolean operation in MoI, the full underlying surface does not change, it stays the same and only new trim curves are calculated on it. This is one of the main reasons why booleans work so much better with NURBS than with polygons, because polygons become fragmented into more and more little pieces with each boolean, while NURBS surfaces still stay in large sheets after each boolean.

But on the other hand the NURBS structure using an "underlying surface" and trim curves also means that there is not necessarily control points to edit at just any edge where 2 surfaces are joined to one another. That's because control points belong to the underlying surface and not edges, except in the special case where you have an "untrimmed" surface.

See this FAQ answer for some more description and examples of this issue:

http://moi3d.com/wiki/QUESTIONS_FREQUENTES#Q:_Pourquoi_.22Voir_Points.22_marche_pour_certains_objets_mais_pas_pour_d.27autres.3F


> again i want to thank you for your support since i'm
> not even a customer for now, but i sure will be very
> soon, no more doubts.

No problem, you're welcome! And from the look of your model it seems that you are already making great progress constructing things in MoI - if you just switch to work at not such a small scale you should likely avoid a lot of problems.

- Michael