I have been testing moi for a few days and decided to buy in. I was pleased to find that I could save a few dollars at Studica. I'm impatiently waiting for my order to go through so I can download V3 beta.

I like to draw fast and I find moi lets me sketch in 3d space very quickly and relatively intuitively with short fast strokes. I have looked high and low and Moi is the first software application that I find to be better than pencil and paper for sketching through the conceptual stage of a 3D form. I find myself using mostly the freeform sketch curve set to repeat along with the Cplane tool to orient my next sketch plane. I keep a few lines locked in a separate layer for mirroring design elements to the other side of symmetric models. When I'm through sketching the rough 3d form, I go back through the model and snap clean curves to the rough sketch in order to produce clean surfaces..

There are some areas that would help my process. I hope to find some of these in V3

I would love to see sketching on surfaces. In V2 the curve tool snaps to a surface but a sketched curve falls through to the Cplane.

I think the Cplane setting tool could us some bells and whistles. - labels for axis, a preview of the plane showing all intersections with curves and surfaces.

I would love The ability to warp or bend the Cplane on the fly. This may be a lot to ask but would be amazing for 3d sketching compound curved features quickly. curved, compound curved and spherical drawing planes (or drawing guides) that would be constrained by 2, 3 or more points.

I realize that all of this can be done with a premeditated surfacing if freeform sketching works on surfaces.. Fingers crossed.

I have several more ideas that would help my particular ideal sketching environment but Ill spare going into that. Mio is brilliant as it is. Like a magic piece of paper that I can rotate the view and sketch off into space. I love that!



Thanks,

IC

Hi IC, these are really great ideas several of which are unfortunately difficult to implement.


> I would love to see sketching on surfaces. In V2 the curve tool snaps to a surface
> but a sketched curve falls through to the Cplane.

This one is probably the most feasible, but so far at least in v3 there is not an option for this right now.


> I think the Cplane setting tool could us some bells and whistles. - labels for axis, a preview of
> the plane showing all intersections with curves and surfaces.

Previews of intersections can be complicated due to the high amount of calculation needed once models become heavier.

Some of the things that would work really nicely with a simple model can't really be implemented because the same feature could cause things to grind to a totally halt once you tried to do the same thing with a much larger model.


> I would love The ability to warp or bend the Cplane on the fly.

Trying to do that would cause a cascading series of enormous complications... Currently the cplane is used to define a regular orthogonal coordinate system and that is used in many ways, like the Top, Front, and Right views can optionally be reoriented to be looking along the temporary coordinate system's axes and numeric input will use the temporary system's x y and z directions when you enter in numeric coordinates. All of these various packaged things that currently go along with setting the cplane are dependent on it being a regular plane and defining a normal coordinate system.

- Michael

Thanks for reading through my wish list.. Its nice to know that Freeform sketch on surface is within the realm of feasible.

I'm patiently waiting for Studica to give me a download link. I was expecting an instant download but it looks like it takes a while to process. Any idea how long Studica orders take to process?

Thanks,

IC

Hi IC,

> Any idea how long Studica orders take to process?

I think it varies depending on how much of a workload they have, often times about 4 or 5 days seems pretty common.

They specialize in working with educational orders and that involves taking in and looking at the student credentials or class schedules and stuff like that, so their order process just in general involves some manual work for each order and isn't so oriented around being 100% fully automated.

- Michael

Hi
FYI, feel free to refer to or check out these two"resources":

Analytic Drawing of 3D Scaffolds - http://www.autodeskresearch.com/publications/3dscaffolds
&
On Expert Performance in 3D Curve-Drawing Tasks - http://www.autodeskresearch.com/publications/3dcurvedrawing

Both come from Autodesk Research and derive from Ryan Schmidt's work there - http://www.autodeskresearch.com/people/ryanschmidt - as well as from his PhD studies at the University of Toronto's Dynamic Graphics Project Group - http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~rms/

Cheers,

. Diego .

Diego,

Thanks for the links. Very interesting. I followed back to Ryan's site and downloaded Shapeshop. That's a fun mesh toy. I really hope Autodesk eventually does something with the 3D scaffold sketching research. . I saw a lot of similarity to MOI in the demonstration video. That makes me thankful to have found MOI. I suspect that the technology from Sketchbook Designer will eventually be found in a 3D sketching environment.

As much as I love a good clean NURBS surface, I am an idea man. I generate Lots of ideas very quickly and I only want to spend time making NURBS for Ideas that deserve to be fleshed out. I would love nothing more than to have a 3D environment that moves at the speed of thought. Pencil and paper would be perfect if I could really draw off into the third dimension!

Thanks again for the links,

IC