Hi Michael.

I think I was expecting it to be a bit like, say the Fillet tool, where you can see what you'll get before commiting.

Things feels a little different, because as soon as the numbers have been entered and you've clicked OK in the calculator pop-up, it moves straight to the next stage.

In effect, if you have used MoI's pop-up calculator or pressed Enter to have a value accepted, you don't seem to get the chance to verify the number values at the X Y, or Z Spacing stage of the array, before proceeding by pressing Done or right-clicking, and I sense this as different behaviour when compared to the initial 'Choose number of copies' stage.

My feelings are similar to Mike's and I wonder if some kind of simplified preview of the arrayed items (bounding box?) might be useful and give enough feedback for the user to judge if the numbers he's entering are giving the kind of result he's looking for. Maybe the 'Calculating...' text could be displayed in complicated situations?

I'd find a Preview option check box acceptable within the dialogues, but whether that's a practical option for you and others I don't know.

 

Thanks.
Martin (2).

Hi Martin, usually I try to avoid having a "Preview" type button and instead just do the preview.

> I think I was expecting it to be a bit like, say the Fillet tool, where you
> can see what you'll get before commiting.
>
> Things feels a little different, because as soon as the numbers have been entered
> and you've clicked OK in the calculator pop-up, it moves straight to the next stage.

Yeah well it is definitely different from Fillet because Fillet only has parameters to adjust in the final stage, while Array grid is broken up into 2 different stages with each stage having some parameters.

But I don't know how I could show a preview for things only while in the "number of copies" stage, because there is not enough information gathered up at that time to actually generate a result, in order to make the array I need to know the number of copies as well as the spacing to be used, and the spacing gets defined in the second stage...

So it could be possible for me to show a preview for when you're drawing the spacing rectangle, but I don't see how I could show it on the "setting number of copies" stage, with how the command is currently structured.

I guess you might be asking about combining all those options together into all one single stage instead of having multiple stages. But trying to break things down into some separate steps is one of the ways that helps to keep things more simplified and easier to use in general because it keeps each individual task somewhat more focused, so that's another thing that I try to do in general to make things easier to use.

What is the situation where you are making an array and you don't know how many copies you need to generate, are you trying to do something like fill a particular region with a pattern? Maybe if I knew more about the situation that you're having difficulty with I could try to make some other alternate tool or some other mode for the array that would work better for that kind of use case.

- Michael

> But it is possible to just use ArrayDir 3 times in sequence, doesn't that do what you're asking about actually? I mean how would an "array grid with array dir mechanics" be any different from just doing array dir 3 times in a row?

Thanks Michael.

I believe I already intuitively follow that method on occasion... The work flow is often so intuitive that it's easy not to think too much about what does what.

It's like when I wonder if it would be possible to tell Array Circular a 2-point 3D axis rather than be stuck with it's C-Plane axis.
I'm used to automatically finding myself Re-Orienting the C-Plane and performing the circular Array without much thought in the process.

Hi Michael.

In essence, all I'm querying is why the second and third (X,Y and Z spacing stages) 'move on' without a right-click or by pressing the Done button. Please look at my video to see what I mean.

http://screencast.com/t/QYy15lOuZIc

A preview feature would be very nice to have for those occasions where an array is called for in perhaps a decorative way, where spacing and number are decided by eye rather than by a specific number and measurement. However, that isn't what I'm asking for at this time - I'm just thinking about the thing in my first paragraph.

The last part of my screencast shows a 2D array system that's part of one of my CAM programs and it works pretty well for me - again, I'm not asking you to build it into MoI or anything, it's just there for interest's sake.


Cheers.
Martin (2).

Hi Martin,

> In essence, all I'm querying is why the second and third (X,Y and Z spacing stages) 'move on'
> without a right-click or by pressing the Done button. Please look at my video to
> see what I mean.

It's because those steps are following the same workflow as the Rectangle drawing command.

If you go to Draw curve > Rectangle > Corner, then place the corner point you'll see the same kind of prompt for entering in both a width and height and once you have filled in both of those that's enough information to finish the rectangle and the rectangle command ends. This eliminates an extra step that would otherwise be needed - with the current workflow for rectangle drawing if you want to create a rectangle of width 10 and height 20 you type in 10, then push tab then type 20 and push enter and it's done, you don't need another additional step for pressing "Done" on top of that.

Since the ArrayGrid is basically drawing a rectangle there, it is set up to try and maintain the same behavior as the regular rectangle drawing command.

It's possible to modify the array behavior by editing the ArrayGrid command script file to make it behave like you want though - in a text editor like Notepad, go to the \commands sub-folder inside of MoI's main installation folder (you will need to right-click on Notepad and use "Run as administrator" if you're using a recent version of Windows since Windows now prevents modification to stuff in \Program Files by default) and open up the ArrayGrid.js file. Go to line number 158 which has this:

			if ( HaveWidth && HaveHeight )
				break;

and either delete those lines or "comment them out" by putting 2 backslashes in front of both lines like this:

			//if ( HaveWidth && HaveHeight )
			//	break;

Once you have done that then I think you should get the behavior that you're asking about where it won't proceed automatically once both width and height have been entered numerically (as opposed to entered by clicking points with the mouse for a spacing rectangle). But you will now have an inconsistent behavior between the regular rectangle drawing command and this area.

- Michael

Thanks for that, Michael.

It's just what I wanted, I've now got the option to check and edit the numbers before finalising the array - the extra mouse click isn't an inconvenience for me.

A preview feature would be nice at some time in the future, provided you could find a good way to implement it and your workload eases a little.


Much appreciated.
Martin (2).