> And as far as I researched the history of MOI it was intended to be a simple tool and
> easy to use, not so much weight on it strictly following NURBS modeling rules,

For what it's worth, have Blender and SU and DAZ Hexagon (all currently FREE :) ) but I'm saving my coins for a MoI license, has a new user (to 3D modelling) I just find MoI to be the easiest to use for the models I'm creating, which are pretty basic and could be easily be done in Blender, SU or hexagon.

For me, MoI would be complete if I could import STL models (not try to convert them to Nurbs ) just preform basic function like move, rotate and scale, so I could place them where I want and export the lot to STL.... now I go the other way , export in OBJ from MoI into hexagon, import the stl object and export the lot back to STL.

Hello,

Each individual will have to do their own evaluation concerning what an application is worth to them. For some that absolutely need some of the specialized tools that Spaceclaim has it may be worth ten times the cost of MoI. In my experience Spaceclaim is a good conceptual modeler but is not a great organic modeler. I started with SU before they were consumed by Google, and while I appreciated the ease of use and the push/pull way of doing things it didn't take me long to run into workflow roadblocks that got me looking at MoI in a serious way. It will take a bit of rewiring of process in the brain to appreciate how to create models, but in my case the journey is worth it.

If you're worried about not being able to model faster than the idea escapes something I like to do is have a bunch of scrap paper around and keep sketches. I also think sketching programs like Artrage are great to quickly capture ideas and then import those for refinement in MoI. If you have Rhino something like TSplines or Clayoo might work well for you. For advanced surfacing I use VSR in Rhino, it saves me from dealing with Autodesk (Alias) and it fits my requirements.

I think what cannot be discounted is the great assistance and education that is provided by the creator of MoI as well as the MoI community. That kind of support and attention to the user base is quite rare in the computing world today.

------- Hopefully the result should be more convenient than push/pull in batch situations, for example I'd like the "depth limiting" curve cut in the booleans to make a set of 2D curves and a solid like this: -------





That would be a cool feature Michael..

Peace,
Rich_Art. ;-)

The problem Michael will have with a combined extrude cut is that the complexity of the command can be high. Inventor and Solidworks do this already but there are a LOT of options to consider e.g. is the end face of the extrude flat or the same as the original surface, is the extrusion parallel, drafted or perpendicular, what do you consider the terminating surface to be, etc, etc. Effectively, you are combining a host of simple commands in to one, with a host of options.

The advantage of doing this in Inventor or Solidworks is that they are parametric, and this type of combined command only creates one feature in the history tree, making future manipulations, such as variants easier, and can be driven by variables that are common across the tree. As MoI doesn't have a parametric history tree or variables, I'm not sure what would be gained.

Hi Steve,

> As MoI doesn't have a parametric history tree or variables, I'm not sure what would be gained.

The primary thing that it would be oriented towards would be just increased modeling speed for just initial creation of some kinds of objects.

I'd be shooting for something pretty simple - possibly just if you select both a solid as well as a curve it could then boolean the result of the extrusion away from that solid.

There are already existing options for controlling whether an extrusion is parallel or drafted so I don't think anything extra would be needed for that in particular.

But yes, definitely combining things can lead to more complexity inside of a command, that's one of the tricky aspects to balance. Yet at the same time it tends to be good for the UI as a whole to have more complexity under the surface somewhat more rather than having it all sort of hammering you in the face right immediately from the very top level.

Anyway the primary goal for this for extrude would be mainly to just basically bundle doing an extrusion and boolean together optionally so that you could save some steps and just make a simple indentation or protrusion more quickly.

Then I think that it will be possible to have some of those additional options in a "limit depth" option for the booleans for another way of getting a similar result.

We'll see how it works out, I think it should be possible to get something that will make some model construction just flow along more quickly though and it's pretty hard to view that as a bad thing, right?

- Michael

The result of the push pull would in my mind depend on the geometry / face it was derived from, like a flat surface makes a perpendicular extrusion or indentation, a curved however would make a perpendicular extrusion like an outline in 2d of a curved surface. As a reference have a look at the joint push pull tool in SU.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=6708

Raven

Hi Raven, for it to take on the characteristics of the surface it means that the surface has to be actually cut up - I don't expect to have that part included directly in the Extrude enhancement stuff that I've been talking about but it would be a part of the "limit depth" option in the booleans though. Well, maybe it's possible for extrude as well, I'll think about that some.

You can actually have Extrude work like that currently though if you cut the base surface up using Trim - you can also extrude individual surfaces, not just curves. See here for an example: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3024.4

There are 2 different ways you can thicken an individual surface like that into a solid currently - Extrude will make an object that goes out straight in one single direction, while Offset > Shell thickens an object by doing an offset operation which makes the other side follow the shape of the surface staying perpendicular to the surface at every individual piece of it (more like a "slab of even thickness everywhere" which is different than an extrusion shape).

See here for a comparison of Extrusion versus Shell and the different results that they make when thickening a surface into a solid:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4791.13

- Michael

"Cut up" or better recreated based on the curves that get outlined in an n value n= extrusion height. In other words, the curves drawn on the surface get moved and scaled away from the original surface then create a new surface in the offset distance plus add 4 (or how many describe the shape in question) new resulting surfaces around this offset surface to close the mesh back up. does this make sense? I'll try and make a graphic of the above soon.

Hi Raven, yeah a sketch graphic of what you are talking about would help me understand more clearly what you are trying to describe.

There are probably some difficulties with what you are describing there... One is that on a non-planar curve it's quite difficult to create a good surface going through it just from scratch as you seem to be describing - there is not just one immediate solution to such a surface and so usually it's more practical for something like this to actually slice up an existing surface since that is better defined.

The main thing that I would be shooting for would just be something like trying to make it easier to get the same kind of result shown here just with fewer steps involved:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3024.4

Is that basically the same kind of thing that you're talking about or are you thinking of something fairly different from that?

- Michael

that's exactly what I was trying to say, and like in this example it should go both ways indent and extrude.

cheers,

Raven

Here are two graphics showing what I had in mind






This shows an extrusion on a spherical surface with the resulting face not only extruded but also larger in scale then the original face.




Just a cylinder showing both the growing geometry and the consistent. The circumference grows while the height stays consistent.


Raven

Yes the function Transform / Offset / Shell makes that if you have first draw Cut - keep - a rectangle on the cylinder face :)

A speedy way to draw this rectangle is to use The New Cut "Iso curve" with keep enable ! ;)

Hi Raven, yup like Pilou writes above the Construct > Offset > Shell command will create geometry like that.

See here for a comparison of Extrusion versus Shell and the different results that they make when thickening a surface into a solid:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4791.13

Maybe it could be possible for Shell to also be updated in a similar way as what I'm thinking of with Extrude to do an automatic boolean with a solid.

Currently you can get the result that you are showing there by using Edit > Trim to cut the cylinder or sphere with the curve to make a little surface fragment, then use Construct > Offset > Shell to thicken the surface into a solid slab which will produce the "uniform thickness" type result that you are showing there, then delete one face from the shelled result and it can then be joined into the main cylinder or sphere piece to get the final result.

The other surface in a case like that is generated by a "surface offset" of the original surface, and an offset of a cylinder is a larger or smaller radius cylinder, and an offset of a sphere is a larger or smaller radius sphere.

The tools for generating things that use offsets like that are located in the UI under Construct > Offset rather than in Construct > Extrude.

- Michael

hi,

one question ^^

How you active the push pull in moi ?

Call Command Extrude !
You can also make a ShortCut on it!
Or Press TAB and write Extrude

c'est quoi la différence avec une extrusion basique ?

si je fais une porte dans le bas d'un cube, je suis toujours obliger de faire opération booléenne pour enlever le morceau de la porte

oui par contre une fois que le trou est fait, là oui je peut déplacer en "push pull"

mais c'est au départ ?

Elle peut se faire aussi en suivant un chemin!
Ce que ne fera pas l'extrude "Push-Pull" automatique!

Et par rapport à SKetchup, le fait d'avoir une surface "porte" ne va pas faire une différence de volume avec extrude!

Oui mais on est bien d'accord qu'il faut encore enlever manuellement la première extrusion ? ( en mode pousser dans quelque chose )

Hi Dzeko - you can do a push/pull type operation if you have a solid and you select a face of that solid and then do an extrusion (Construct > Extrude) of the face.

When there is a face selection the generated extrusion is automatically booleaned with the base solid, either Boolean difference if you go inwards to the solid, or Boolean union if you extrude towards the outside direction.

Someday I'd like to have an option for this to also work if you are extruding curves that are positioned on the surface of a solid but currently that doesn't work, you need to select faces to do the automatic boolean mode. You can use Edit > Trim followed by Edit > Join to slice a face up into sections to prepare it for push/pulling though.

With a face selected, doing Extrude then works like this:



- Michael

A la différence de Sketchup il n'y a pas de différence automatique avec Extrude d'une face ne faisant pas partie du volume!



Par contre oui quand il y auto-intersection et suivant le sens!