Hi Stav,
> That same minimalist approach to the documentation is however frustrating :)
Yeah unfortunately if I spent all my time working on the documentation there would not be much progress on the software itself.
But the forum here can be a big resource, if you get stuck post your questions here!
Flow in particular is not documented in the help file because it is a new feature for the v3 development cycle and new features only get documented at the end of the cycle since they may be changed during it.
> There are some basic things that I cant figure out ...coming from polygon modelling.
The overall approach of NURBS modeling is very different than sub-d - you want to rely on 2D curves a lot more and also rely on booleans and cutting operations as a primary way of doing things. That can take a little while to sink in for people from a sub-d modeling background who are used to avoiding booleans at all costs. Instead with NURBS modeling often times building things as a simple extended piece and then using booleans should be the main approach.
Check out here for some links to discussions and general tips for people who are coming from a sub-d / poly modeling background:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4865.2
> Im trying to build a ring by flowing a leafy shape along a lofted surface.
> The target surface is drawn from a few arcs which are joined, duplicated and lofted.
Flow only works from one individual surface to another individual surface (unless you are using "projective" mode). See here for some previous discussions:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4795.10
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4363.124
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4363.65
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4442.24
> When I try to flow onto that surface I can only select a part of the surface and not the whole thing.
That's because flow goes from one surface to one other surface, your object there is made of multiple surfaces joined together, not just one single surface.
> Join does not seem to "join" the surfaces or lines. Am I missing something.
Join glues together surfaces into a kind of assembly where there is a shared edge between the surfaces and the edge knows about the connection. That is not the same thing as making one single surface.
Generally to make one single surface you need to produce that from one go of a surface creation command like do one longer loft or sweep to produce the kind of result that you want.
I do expect in the future to make a surface/surface merging command too but currently you need to just make sure that you are constructing one single surface in the surface creation command itself.
> Same seems true for constructing curves. When I join multiple segments the seem to remain distinct.
> Is there a way to "continue" from the last point of a line that has already been drawn?
You can move the last point over and then insert new points behind it. Also if you join 2 curves that meet up smoothly you can use the Rebuild command to reconstruct it and the reconstruction process will build one single segment in areas where multiple segments are touching smoothly.
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference10.htm#rebuild
But also you can just draw a new curve that's longer than the previous one, sometimes it's best to just draw a new curve snapping onto the previous one.
> While Im at it...can someone clarify the relationship between point on a curve and control points?
> Its the points on a curve that seem to break continuity when joining.
All the points that you see when you turn on points are control points, the points where 2 segments touch each other is a "corner point" and will make a sharp corner in the curve when you move it around. Another way to fuse together segments is to delete those corner points.
> Also...and this is a big one....the flow is beautiful, but for the life of me I cannot figure out
> the underlying orientation secrets.
Check out some of the flow links above.
> Surface to surface is more obvious, but how does line to line orient? In Blender I can choose an axis.
Line to line orients by matching the ends that you click closest to. Sometimes there can be an additional twist happening that you might not want for how things are rotated around the curve - right now the easiest way to avoid that is to position both curves to be flat in the world x/y plane rather than having one going up vertically or something like that. I will probably be working on some method to alter how things are rotated around the curve in the future.
> It would certainly be helpful to see line and surface directions in the viewport.
In general the line and surface directions do not have any impact on what you're doing with modeling operations - usually the commands rely on pick information to determine orientation, like pick on one end of a line to make that the start of the sweep, etc.... So since the inherent directions are not used for modeling there would not be all that much point in showing them.
> Which brings me to my last question....why is there no wireframe mode,?
It's not needed because there is instead a hidden line display mode that gives you access to all the same curves as a wireframe mode would. You can turn that on or off under View palette > Display hidden lines. If you really really want to, you can hide all faces using the "Types" section of the scene browser, that will basically give you a wireframe display, but there is not really much purpose in doing that.
> I have attached an image
Can you please attach your 3DM model file too when you have a question about a specific model, it helps a lot to be able to examine your actual geometry.
Hope some of this info helps!
- Michael
