> I had not even thought of that, you're right...I can't even fathom the planning
> and foresight that must go into building the UI ...you're doing a fantastic job
> of it, and I do appreciate that you take into account everyone's comments
> and suggestions in the process.

Thanks, Jesse! Yes, doing the UI tends to be the most difficult part.

It took me about a year's worth of work to get most of the basic MoI UI in place. It tends to be a lot more difficult with MoI than in previous programs that I've done because I'm not really following some pre-existing template very much. For many other programs designing the UI is a lot easier if you just say you're going to follow some existing standard like "make it work like office"...


> I have used the Rotation Axis in the 3d viewport, but I find it difficult to
> get a handle on things to place those points when there's a lot going on
> in the viewport to look at..

Do you mean you find it difficult to place the 2 axis points? Or the points that define the rotation angle after that?


> That's why I thought if you could just call up a temporary construction plane, it would be easier.

Which part would be easier? Do you mean you would then switch away from the 3D view and go to a top/front/right view to make it easier? Because if you stay in the 3D view, rotate axis is already right now doing the same thing as placing a temporary construction plane. As you move your mouse around you will be picking points on an invisible plane perpendicular to the axis, just the same as if you had actually set a construction plane there.


> This is great!. At first I thought MoI was going to be sort of "Rhino-lite", but it's
> already evolving way beyond that now into a totally new kind of CAD program.

Yeah, MoI is not actually intended to be a "lite" anything. It sort of might feel like that right now but that is mostly due to it being a V1 product that still needs more time to fully mature in different areas. Also I guess the focus on simple things first kind of gives it that feel a bit too.

The second part of your comment there is more the intent - with MoI I wanted to do some new things that just were not being done by any existing CAD program. At first this was about making it work well with a tablet and not requiring any touching of the keyboard which is very unique to MoI. I want to keep that ability but also things have evolved to a more general focus on ease of use which is also not particularly present in existing CAD systems either.

I can understand that people can get easily confused between "easy to use" and "lite", but really they are not the same thing.

There are also some pieces of unique technology in MoI aside from the UI too - for example the n-gon mesh exporter. As far as I am aware there is no other NURBS software that offers this ability, even at the $20,000+ price range (if anyone is aware of anything else that can do this, please let me know). Normally you would not find exclusive industry technology in a "Lite" product!! :)

- Michael

>with MoI I wanted to do some new things that just were not being done by any existing CAD program.<

Well, you've already done that and it's still in beta and works like a champ. I think the careful planning and your intention to make it powerful but simple to use has paid off because although some of the tools have needed tweaking as you bring them in, it's had relatively few bugs compared to a lot of other new programs and for that matter, some established programs when they've introduced updates..

Here's the thing I was talking about...
I'd like to place a cylinder ( w/ filleted top ) in the correct position and angle of orientation, while working in the 3d viewport with C-lines. I can make some scaffolding from curves to extrude the cylinder in the right orientation or do it by rotating the entire ring in the front viewport so that the extrude of the cylinder is straight north and south.

Thanks,

-Jesse

Hi Jesse, even though clines make it possible to place something in the right spot in one single command, sometimes it is not worth the planning effort that it requires to get it all set up just right. Like in this instance even though it is possible to draw a cylinder in the exact spot, it is kind of easier to draw it in the orientation and then move it off ot the side as a second step.

Also I don't think that there is anything wrong with your scaffolding method, that's probably more what I would do because it kind of gives you some pretty good visualization as you are setting it up.

But anyway, to do that the cline way here is what I would do - start the cylinder command.

Drag the first cline between the tips of your stones to set up a midpoint osnap:



Now drag the second cline between the origin and the midpoint of the previous cline:



I believe this gets you your correct orientation. So now zoom in there a bit (so you can more easily snap on to just the cline instead of on to the neighboring stones), and draw your cylinder:



Now for the second step you can drag it off to the side a bit, or use Transform/Copy with a distance constraint if you know the exact distance you want it displaced from the center line.

It would have been possible to relocate that oriented line off to the side a bit first so that your cylinder would be in the exact right spot right away, but I think that may actually be more complicated overall.

- Michael

Michael, MoI is not lite anything indeed it is in a class all by itself Kudos to you :) Thanks for the c line tutorials. I am getting better at learning to use them. Here are my recent doodle of this simple bottle/can opener in it I set out to really focus on using the c line among other things. Exercises like this make me focus on the minor details of this everyday object with fresh eyes and appreciate its use and design in new ways. Very much like MoI deceptive in its work flow and power even at this stage in its development. I hope that makes sense?

Hi phlatt5th, that's a nice can-opener result. Nice clean construction!

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thanks, It's good to know how to locate the c-lines so that you can control the orientation of the cylinder, I can use that for other things, as well... since the correct spacing and over-lap of the objects is crucial to having the model function in metal and real stones, and it's different for every finger size relative to the stone size, it takes some planning to lay these things out anyway, so maybe scaffolding in combination with some c-lines when you need them, would be a good solution.

-Jesse

> so maybe scaffolding in combination with some c-lines when you need them, would be a good solution.

Yeah, I think so. There is some overhead to doing the scaffolding (invoking multiple drawing tools, erasing stuff later, etc...) but if you are already spending some time planning things then this overhead is not a problem.

But if you want something quick, for instance just getting a cylinder drawn at the correct orientation at an approximate height or lateral offset location for a type of quick visualization sketch, then clines keeps things moving along really speedily for that type of a thing because placing just one or two clines is super quick and there is no erase time. Like it might take you only 2 seconds to place the quick cline temporary "scaffolding" in place, but maybe something like 10 seconds to place regular geometry scaffolding, especially because for regular geometry scaffolding you have to trigger multiple commands and also possibly move stuff around a bit since you don't have the implicit extensions that clines have built in.

10 seconds versus 2 seconds is not a big deal if you've already spent a few minutes planning stuff out. But if you want to just draw and sketch stuff really quickly, it does become more significant because just a few more seconds starts to take away the rapid "drawing" type feeling...

- Michael