Hi Michael,

I came across this video the other day http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA2-i34UVUo&feature=related and there are a few things I saw in there that I would love to see in Moi.

1- It would be nice to recreate something like the view normal thing in Solidworks and most of its behaviour if ever possible. Kind of automated cplane (I know something similar already exist in Moi but not as a single click)

2- I kind of like the both the 2D and 3D spline tool Solidworks offers but I would be happy with only the possibility of adding constraint like the pierce, hori, vert, curvature, etc (a la solidworks) to existing curve tools in Moi.

3- Another thing impressed me a lot, when he creates the first "loft" it shows that the added the horisontal constraint to the handle of the spline where it meets the mirror plane, ensure a "perfect" mirror of the surface at the mirror plane anywhere on that particular surface edge where it meets the mirror plane.

4- Here I'm refering to most of the surface creation tools of Solidworks I saw in this video. It seems like these tools offer a kind of edge by edge control of the continuity and or relation with adjacent surface. This kind of control alone would be awsome to have in Moi.

I like very much the explanation of the fill tool used to create the 3 edge surface near the end of the video, it explain pretty well how it works.

I know, a program like solidworks would require that I morgage the house basically and it's not really fair to compare it with Moi. My goal here was to use this video to express ideas that would have been very difficult for me to explain otherwise. In summary, I think the idea I tried to explain in point 4 would the most awsome thing to have in Moi, maybe in version 4...

Regards,
Felix

Hi Felix, I haven't had a chance to watch the whole video yet, maybe if you could include the particular time at which each of your points occur that would let me see what you're describing without having to watch through the entire video first.

re: #1 - you can get a view looking straight down a surface normal using the View > CPlane tool in MoI - when you place a cplane the "Top" view in moi will be looking exactly down on it. It's only a 2 click process to place a cplane - an initial click to place the base point and then you can adjust the orientation of how you want to be twisted around that normal (by like banking left or right) or if the default banking is fine then do a right click to accept that placement and you'll be done.

re: Fill - yup I definitely want to add in an N-sided blend mechanism into MoI that I think is what you're referring to there. It's unfortunately a pretty finicky area to get working well so I'm not quite sure exactly when it will happen but it's certainly on my list.

re: various constraints - I'd love to add those in as well, however they will involve a considerable amount of additional UI systems that are required to manipulate them. Things that involve a lot of new UI will tend to be slow to get added into MoI since it's very easy for large amounts of UI to also introduce complexity and "bloat", and have a lot of potential to turn MoI from a light and easy to use tool into a complex and difficult to use program. Keeping that "light and easy to learn" overall feel is a very important goal for MoI so things that require a lot of complexity to manage are not an instant easy fit with MoI, it requires a huge amount of design time for me to try and figure out good ways of integrating such elaborate things while not adding too much complexity.

So those kinds of things may be possible at some point in the future but some of those are rather farther off.

N-sided blend will probably be one of the sooner ones than constraints, because I think it can be added as just one new command so it should not introduce a lot of UI bloat.

SolidWorks as a whole has a big system in place for building and editing constraints, and I think some of the features that you are referring to go along with that entire system - basically those ones are much more difficult to add into MoI without adding in a corresponding overall large system of editing them. That focus in SolidWorks of building things in a "feature tree" manner has a big impact on the overall workflow, one of the things that's nice about MoI is that it has a very light and fluid workflow and basically lets you just freely draw and you don't always have to be going through as many preparation steps in order to do things.

- Michael

My Felix, my "two cents", for what it's worth...

> 1- It would be nice to recreate something like the view normal thing in Solidworks and most of its behaviour if ever possible. Kind of automated cplane (I know something similar already exist in Moi but not as a single click)

MoI's C-Plane is not too shabby, the handle bars can be set and snapped before and after selection to give you ultimate control.
And you can program a shortcut key for it to help you speed things up:

script: /* Set the CPlane */ moi.view.setCPlaneInteractive();

(thanks Michael!)

> 2- I kind of like the both the 2D and 3D spline tool Solidworks offers but I would be happy with only the possibility of adding constraint like the pierce, hori, vert, curvature, etc (a la solidworks) to existing curve tools in Moi.

Switching between flat views give you some measure of control... I personally would like the ability to go back to a pre-existing spline curve and start adding and drawing more points as if you didn't end it before. Currently you have to draw another curve snapped to the end and then Join and Rebuild.


> 3- Another thing impressed me a lot, when he creates the first "loft" it shows that the added the horisontal constraint to the handle of the spline where it meets the mirror plane, ensure a "perfect" mirror of the surface at the mirror plane anywhere on that particular surface edge where it meets the mirror plane.

There are ways to achieve this result. If your Loft contains a mirror set of profile curves, then the mid-point will we symmetrical. Often, if I want to Blend or create something that comes out exactly 90 degrees from the "mirror plane", I'll take the profile on the mirror line and Extrude a straight surface to the opposite side of the mirror allowing me to use Blend to create a tangent surface from the mirror.


> 4- Here I'm refering to most of the surface creation tools of Solidworks I saw in this video. It seems like these tools offer a kind of edge by edge control of the continuity and or relation with adjacent surface. This kind of control alone would be awsome to have in Moi.

Me too! ;-) I wish (Michael) the best of success with exploration of future surfacing tools.

MoI has a lot going for it with it's current surfacing tools though. The new Iso-Curve Trim has turned out to be really helpful!
For instance, sometimes the edges of two surfaces are very long curves and fall out of tolerance at some places and there may be a few disconnected slivers in places along the seam that don't want to Join.
Just Iso-Curve Trim that problem area and the little split will often disappear.

re re 1- I understand we can create a cplane just as easy in Moi. I mentioned this feature of SW because it seems to work a bit like "magic" and I find this pretty nice feature.

re re Fill- If I understand correctly, in SW when you set a constraint or a relation like is establish near 19:40 on the profile curve, we are insured it will be maintained all the way along the rail curve (or edge of the surface). The same is true with the other end of the profile where a C2 relation is set. (this happen a little bit before 19:40) All this is not related to a fill command yet, SW calls it a loft, I believe in Moi it as to do with a 2 rail sweep and I'm not sure it would be possible now to maintain these type of constraint through out the sweep. I assume this would be the kind of feature you're working on but a la Moi of course.

re re: various constraints You mention at some point you wanted to add something like a property page and you mentioned as well, if I recall correctly, that you thought of using a dialog box in that specific case. Probably because it would require more UI space then available. Maybe this would be the way to go when a specific command would require a bit to much UI space. Maybe you could consider kind of blanking temporarely all the space under "Moi" and bring up a specific UI for the command currently used. Something like a frameset and or frame used to provide, just a thought.
Though I mention the constraint stuff in point 2, I was thinking more of a new curve command with handles like shown in the video. I would think it would be much easier to trace pretty nice flowing curve over bitmaps for example with such a tool. Currently, for the purpose of tracing bitmaps, I'm creating strait line a tangency points and use the blend command to create nice flowing curve in the mathematical sense that match as much as possible the underlying bitmap but as you know working like this creates a joined curve with a bunch of corner point that also create (unwanted) edge when use with the sweep command. What can I say, when I look at an object, say like the mouse in the video, I find it disrupting to see all these edge where the underlying surfaces are joined. I know it's easy to hide them in Moi but it's a bit more complicated to return to the previous view.


Re - N-sided blend- If I'm not mistaking, currently the blend command offers a form of continuity constraint that applies to both edge and we can't set it for each edge independently. Though a blend command that would work on more then 2 edges at a time would be more then welcomed, I would believe, the possibility of controling the continuity on each edge would be the ultimate goal of such a command. Something that could be similar in functionality to what is shown around 27:15 and though it would be nice to see the surface mesh adjust while setting the edge constraint, I understand a simple looking detail like that would require way to much UI and coding for the purpose it serve. I'm sure implementing edge by edge continuity constraint to the blend command is already complex enough by itself that the kind of visual feedback shown in the video can be left out without affecting the functionality of the command.

Just in case you didn't know yet, I wouldn't change my Moi for anything else even if it was free. I'm addicted to Moi and I don't think I'll live long enough to change my mind on this.


Regards,
Felix

Hi Mike,

though it's true I can do basically the same with Moi for the cplane thing but in SW I this command is pretty intuitive to use and it could be a nice addition. I would be plenty satisfied with a script that does pretty much with the same thing.

>Switching between flat views give you some measure of control... I personally would like the ability to go back to a pre-existing spline curve and start adding and drawing more points as if you didn't end it before. Currently you have to draw another curve snapped to the end and then Join and Rebuild.

I would find that pretty nice as well.

>There are ways to achieve this result. If your Loft contains a mirror set of profile curves, then the mid-point will we symmetrical. Often, if I want to Blend or create something that comes out exactly 90 degrees from the "mirror plane", I'll take the profile on the mirror line and Extrude a straight surface to the opposite side of the mirror allowing me to use Blend to create a tangent surface from the mirror.

Though I understand there are what I would call "workarounds" to do this in Moi, IMHO I think this constraint stuff provides a much more elegant solution to the problem. I understand as well from what Michael pointed out, that this kind of stuff would require a great deal of work which ever way you look at it.

>MoI has a lot going for it with it's current surfacing tools though. The new Iso-Curve Trim has turned out to be really helpful!
For instance, sometimes the edges of two surfaces are very long curves and fall out of tolerance at some places and there may be a few disconnected slivers in places along the seam that don't want to Join.
Just Iso-Curve Trim that problem area and the little split will often disappear.

The way I see this constraint stuff which is presented quite nicely in the video (beginning at 27:20 or just about) and where you also see pretty well the structure of a Nurbs surface being created. Basically what we see live is that a Nurbs surface is (always) a square surface with a more or less dense set of mesh like isocurve (probably) that is "fitted" using continuity constraint for each edge, when it's all done (for each edge) the surface is trimmed to those same edge and this give the us the pretty nice patch we see. All this tells me that the algorythm for this kind of stuff exist, now does the library Micheal uses for Moi have it ready to be used, that's another story. My guess is that it is not bundle into a single function and it would require Michael to create it. It's possible also that even continuity function required for this may not be implemented in such a way that they can be used as is for the function required for this kind of stuff and implies even more work.

As Michael pointed out in is reply, this would also require UI stuff that might not be so easy to implement. I just know enough about maths to know this continuity stuff in 3D is way above the competance of most people on this earth and well above mine for sure.

As I said before, when I saw this continuity stuff in the video I immediatly saw that this functionality would be a great addition to Moi but I understand a neet feature like that, however useful it may be, is definitely another story to implement.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> I understand we can create a cplane just as easy in Moi. I mentioned this feature
> of SW because it seems to work a bit like "magic" and I find this pretty nice feature.

I guess I'm not sure how it's any different than setting a CPlane in MoI ? Is it because there's some animation that happens during the view movement or something else?


> re re Fill- If I understand correctly, in SW when you set a constraint or a relation
> like is establish near 19:40 on the profile curve, we are insured it will be maintained
> all the way along the rail curve (or edge of the surface).

I'm not sure about that - the constraint at 19:40 seems to me to be about just making that one particular curve have a horizontal tangent, I don't believe it has anything to do with the entire surface at that particular point yet. It looks like the shape of the entire edge is modified around 21:25 when an additional relation is added to the entire edge - so as far as I can tell the curve constraint that you are referring to at 19:40 does not apply to the entire length of the generated surface just from that alone which is what you seem to be saying?

Right in that same area of the video it looks like there is an entire page along the left side hand of the application to control a zillion options for stuff - that's really exactly the kind of complex UI that I'm trying very hard to avoid having inside of MoI.


> re re: various constraints You mention at some point you wanted to add something
> like a property page and you mentioned as well, if I recall correctly, that you thought
> of using a dialog box in that specific case.

Yeah but such things are not what I'd exactly call "desirable" - I am planning on putting in a kind of dumping ground area where I will be able to put in a whole bunch of specific object tools in an object property page but that does not necessarily mean that I want that to be the new standard approach for doing a bunch of other things in that same way too!

Something that would require huge complex dialog boxes in order to function will tend to go on the back burner for quite a while as I hope to find other alternatives to do it better than that. That's basically one essential strategy that helps to avoid the UI from getting super complex and difficult to use.


At any rate, I do expect to get in a couple of new key tools that would help for doing this kind of stuff - one is an "N-sided blend", which would function fairly differently than the current blend - the current blend works basically similar to sweep where there are 2 rails and the sweep profiles are constructed by blend curves being created between the surfaces. An "N-sided" blend (which is called Fill in that video) will take a closed loop of edges and then fits a larger square surface patch that goes through those and then gets trimmed by those edges. It will actually work more by taking an initial plane surface and deforming that plane until it warps through those boundary edges, so it's fairly different in its construction method than the 2-sided sweep-like current Blend command. The tricky part is to make the plane deform in a nice way and not have things like undulations and ripples in areas where there are not any fit points.

Then the other main new tool needed in this general area is a "Match" tool which is about editing an edge of an untrimmed surface so that the surface is smooth with a neighboring one.

- Michael

>Then the other main new tool needed in this general area is a "Match" tool which is about editing an edge of an untrimmed surface so that the surface is smooth with a neighboring one.

Michael, you mean Match Edge would'nt work on the edges that are trimmed, which is 98% of what my models are made of?

Uh oh... Am I getting that right?

>The tricky part is to make the plane deform in a nice way and not have things like undulations and ripples in areas where there are not any fit points.

I, as well as other will jump at the chance to Beta test the heck out it when you create it! Sounds awesome!

I know it might be silly that I suggested a surface wrinkle "relaxer" tool, but if Jheri Curl works on hair, shouldn't something work on NURBS? ;-)

Hi Mike,

> Michael, you mean Match Edge would'nt work on the edges that are trimmed,
> which is 98% of what my models are made of?

You'll be able to match _to_ a trimmed edge, but the edge being modified will need to be a "natural edge" of the surface.

That's because match will work by a certain kind of surface control point editing, and on a trimmed edge there is not really any particular direct controlling connection between the edge and the surface shape.

On an untrimmed edge the surface and the edge are more implicitly connected together.


> I know it might be silly that I suggested a surface wrinkle "relaxer" tool <...>

That's probably what would be called a "surface fairing" tool and I would like to have that too, it's just probably a kind of lower priority thing that blending and matching.

- Michael

> You'll be able to match _to_ a trimmed edge, but the edge being modified will need to be a "natural edge" of the surface.

So the ends of Blends, Fillets, Sweeps and Networks should fit perfectly into that requirement.
Now that I think of it, I sure there's some instance, but I'm having a hard time trying to visualize when two trimmed edges would meet.

Often times, I'll do a procedure where after making two Blend surfaces side-by-side, they don't meet and there is often a gap, overlap or both. Because they are untrimmed natural edges, Match would be able to meet their edges square and tangent(ally) with no need to do any further surgery.

...I like. =-)

Hi Mike, normally you have things meet up at 2 trimmed edges as the result of boolean operations. Most of the regular surface construction methods generate untrimmed surfaces initially, the main expection being Construct > Planar and also end caps on things like extrusions.

- Michael

Michael,

> I guess I'm not sure how it's any different than setting a CPlane in MoI ?
> Is it because there's some animation that happens during the view movement or something else?

Though SW animates this, it's just decoration that we could do without but what I like about this functionality is that we just need to select a surface or a 3D curve and by clicking this icon, the view switches automatically normal to this surface or curve. I just think it could speedup the workflow.


Your right and again I missed a few things. The main idea though is still about constraint and or relation and especially, in case of curve, we can specify these constraint at each end independently and in the case of surface, we can specify these constraint edge by edge. Now implementing something like that a la Moi may be quite difficult if not impossible without a major shift in what makes MOI a moment of inspiration. I just like this concept of constraint and I'd like to have this in Moi if ever possible.



It's not the first time you mention this new "N-sided Blend" command. I'm sure it will be impressive and very useful. When you mention: "the tricky part is to make the plane deform..." it sound like you intend to use some form of iterative process to implement this. Does this mean the library use for this kind of stuff (Solid++ I think) doesn't have a function for this already? Just curious.

Felix

Hi Felix,

> what I like about this functionality is that we just need to select a surface or a 3D curve
> and by clicking this icon, the view switches automatically normal to this surface or curve.
> I just think it could speedup the workflow.

Do you mean only the 3D view would switch? Or do you mean the 2D Top view in MoI would switch?

MoI's viewports are set up somewhat differently than SolidWorks, since MoI has the multi-view system where you have separate Top/Front/Right views in addition to the freely rotating 3D view.

If you want to position the Top/Front/Right views, the CPlane tool already does exactly that.

It's overall bad for UI complexity to add in new icons that essentially just do the same thing as an existing tool, that's one way that the UI can easily become bloated and so full of icons that it's no longer easy to find stuff inside of it. Things like that can be implemented as plug-ins though, that may be a better fit for something like this.

I'm still not entirely sure what you are asking for though, because if you want to do 2D work right on that spot of the surface normal like I've mentioned several times the cplane tool in MoI will do that already, and if you don't want to do 2D work right on that spot I don't quite understand what the purpose of the view change would really accomplish.



> The main idea though is still about constraint and or relation and especially, in case of curve,
> we can specify these constraint at each end independently and in the case of surface, we
> can specify these constraint edge by edge.

That fits under what I was describing earlier about a "Match" command that would edit a curve or a surface to be smooth to another object. It will likely be more like an edit tool that adjusts the curve or surface and not quite exactly a "constraint" since constraint sort of implies that it's being used in some kind of history mechanism.


> Does this mean the library use for this kind of stuff (Solid++ I think) doesn't
> have a function for this already? Just curious.

It does sort of have one, but it has the problem that I described earlier that it tends to have quite a lot of undulations in the output surface. So it's not particularly useful as-is.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

about this SW "Normal to" command, I understand you might have difficulty understanding what I write, most likely because I have a hard time myself putting what I want to say in words, so I'll try again. When I saw the video I noticed the guy using this tool a few time and I though it would be nice to have one similar in Moi. Yes I know I could setup a shortcut to create a cplane and set it coplanar to the surface or curve I want to view strait on (normal to) and select the view that will show the cplane the way I want. Doing this in Moi represent a certain number of steps, mouse clicks and the works and yes it's not a big deal but I wonder if a command or script could be setup to do all this in as few steps as possible, 2 if possible, 1 to select the object we want to view "normal to" and the other to create the cplane (automatically) and swicth to proper (2D) view. All the work would be done behind the scene by a command or script maybe, that of course is up to you. If you think it's not worth the effort then lets just forget it. Just in case this help you understand a bit more, I usually works in a single view at a time and sometimes I need to setup a cplane to make work easier when the cplane is coplanar to some implied plane of an object I want to work on.

If I understand correctly, with the new N-sided blend command combine with the new match command we will be able to create "a la Moi" surfaces and apply some "matching" continuity with adjacent surfaces. As you noted, this requires a large amount of UI in SW most likely because SW combine (to) many options in all the surface generating commands. I assume the match command would work on any surface which ever way it was created, sweep, loft, revolve, etc. That way you wouldn't have to modify the UI of any of the surface generating commands in Moi. Your a genius!

Thanks for the info about the library.

Regards,
Felix

Hi Felix,

> but I wonder if a command or script could be setup to do all this in as few steps as possible, 2
> if possible, 1 to select the object we want to view "normal to" and the other to create the
> cplane (automatically) and swicth to proper (2D) view.

Does this script do what you need? :

script: /* Set cplane and switch to top view */ moi.view.setCPlaneInteractive(); moi.ui.mainWindow.viewpanel.mode = 'Top';

That combines setting the cplane and then automatically switching to the maximized "Top" view after you have placed the cplane.

It's a 2 click process - after you trigger it you can snap the base point of the orientation picker onto the surface you want to be normal to, then after that base point is placed you will be in the orientation picker stage where you can adjust the rotation of the plane if you want, do a right-click in this stage for your second click and then that will do it.

That saves you one single click about setting the view to "Top".

Right now there's no way to avoid the rotation-specifying stage when placing the cplane, but it only takes one right-click in the viewport to accept the default plane orientation, you do not actually have to go over to the "Done" button.



> I assume the match command would work on any surface which ever way it was created, sweep, loft,
> revolve, etc. That way you wouldn't have to modify the UI of any of the surface generating commands in Moi.

Yup, that's the idea.

- Michael