The new Mar-17 beta is not working properly on OSX 10.6 - if you're running 10.6 "Snow Leopard", there are some stability problems there with the new multi-touch handling stuff. You'll need to disable the multi-touch functionality in MoI by deleting one particular file to avoid sporadic crashes.

To do that, make sure MoI is not running, and then right-click on the app and choose “Show package contents”, then inside there go into drive_c/moi and there will be a file there named moi_touch.dylib – delete this file and that will then disable the new multi-touch event handling which does not seem to get along properly with 10.6 .

For the next beta I’ve automatically disabled the multi-touch handling when running on 10.6 .

This only applies to OSX version 10.6 Snow Leopard specifically, 10.7 and 10.8 are not affected.

Thanks,
- Michael

Finally got some notes gathered up for the new multitouch view navigation stuff:



Multitouch view navigation - use multitouch gestures (pinch or drag fingers) to do zoom/pan/rotate view manipulations. This works on Mac OSX 10.7 or 10.8 using a trackpad or on Windows 8 using a touch screen. There's a demo video here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5731.1

The supported gestures are:

   Pan by 2 fingers dragging left/right/up/down

   Zoom by pinching index finger and thumb together or apart.

   Rotate left/right/up/down in the 3D view by dragging 3 fingers.

   2 finger double tap for view reset (zoom to selected objects or zoom to all if done a second time).

   Twist thumb and index fingers for 2D ortho view spin or 3D view tilt if those are enabled under settings.


Zooming in and out with multitouch can be easier to control in the 3D view if you have a parallel view projection rather than perspective. You can set a parallel projection under Options > View > "3D view projection". To set the default projection on startup, save a 3DM file with a parallel projection set and then put that 3DM file as the startup template under Options > General > Template file.

On OSX, 3 finger dragging for rotation in the 3D view will not work if any 3 finger swiping is already being used for OSX system functions. Check under System Preferences > Trackpad > More Gestures. If "Swipe between full-screen apps" or "Mission Control" are set to use 3 finger swiping, change them to use 4 finger swiping instead, then MoI will be able to receive the 3 finger dragging events.

There are some options available for changing multitouch behavior under Options > Rotate/Pan/Zoom options > MultiTouch options (in lower-right area):

   Reverse rotation checkbox - when enabled the 3D view rotation directions will be reversed.

   Rotate ortho views checkbox - when enabled thumb/index spin will spin the 2D ortho (top/front/right) views.

   Swap 3D rotate and pan checkbox - when enabled 2 finger dragging in the 3D view will do rotation and 3 fingers will do panning instead.

   Allow 3D rotation tilt - when enabled thumb/index spin will tilt the 3D view left or right.

   Rotation speed, Pan speed, and Zoom speed - a scale factor can be entered in here to adjust the speed of these movements, for example putting in 0.5 will make that operation half speed, putting in 2 will double the speed.


There are also a few additional settings available in moi.ini under the [MultiTouch] section:

[MultiTouch]
SingleFingerRotation=n
TiltSpeed=1.0
TiltCenterMode=0

SingleFingerRotation can be set to =y on Windows to make just one finger dragging do 3D view rotation instead of 3 finger dragging. This will prevent things like window selection from happening with touch so you should probably only try this if you also have a mouse or pen to use for selection.

TiltSpeed can be set to a scale factor to speed up or slow down thumb/index finger spin action in 3D views.

TiltCenterMode can be set to 0, 1, or 2 and controls how the center point works for 3D view tilting.
   With TiltCenterMode = 0 the current centroid of the touch points is used for the tilt center. With this one the tilt center moves right along with your fingers.
   With TiltCenterMode = 1 it will use the centroid between the 2 fingers just at the initial start of the 2 finger gesture, it won't update as you move your finger around, only when you start a new gesture.
   With TiltCenterMode = 2 it will use the center of the viewport as the tilt center, it won’t make any difference where on the screen you are at as far as tilting goes.


Thanks to William Knop for implementing OSX touch event handling code, and Isaiah Coberly for testing the Windows version.


- Michael

Does this yet exist in the link beta http://moi3d.com/beta.htm
or will be in the next release ?

Hi Pilou, the multitouch stuff listed above is all in the current Mar-17 beta already, I just had not collected up the notes for it until now.

- Michael

Great work on everything so far Michael. I will soon post some of my real life design/manufacturing examples in the aerospace sector and how MOI V3 has been instrumental in that work.

Is it reasonable to assume that the continuity options are next in line for the next beta?
Can't wait for those options/tools....

Hi niko,

> Is it reasonable to assume that the continuity options are next in line for the next beta?

Right now I don't fully understand where they will go in the UI, things like that are usually not quite "next in line"...

One of the main ways that I keep the UI streamlined and easy to use is that I prioritize things that fit into the existing UI without needing to add a lot more entry points, I have a few things along those lines that I am working on currently.

-Michael

Hi Michael
I have just downloaded the latest V3 beta
Which files do I copy from the previous beta to the the new one ?

Do I copy all from the commands folder , but not replace files already in the destination folder?.

As I have a lot of additional scripts and commands I have added from the forum. (like ringcircle )
thanks
shayne

Hi shayne,

> Do I copy all from the commands folder , but not replace files already in the destination folder?.

Yes, that should work - all the things you need to copy over are the files you added into the commands folder - just copy them all and say no to overwriting any already existing ones and that should work fine.

Shortcut key definitions don't need to be brought over, those are stored in moi.ini and the new release will use the same moi.ini file as the previous beta. So it's just files added into the commands folder that need to be copied over.

- Michael

Thanks works perfectly
My portable copy on a USB stick do I need to copy the current moi.ini and the template file I use into there also, where is the best place to put them, in the moi folder ?

Will it find the moi.ini (I know I have to point to the template from options)

thanks
shayne

Hi shayne, yes for the one on the USB stick copy moi.ini into the same folder as MoI.exe, it will look for it there first and use it if it finds it there.

The template file is a bit trickier, it wants to have a full path to that so you can put it on the USB stick but you'd then put in the drive letter of the USB drive (which may change though on different machines) as the path to the template file. It may possibly work if you leave off the path and that should theroetically look in the current directory at start up time which probably will be the same location as MoI.exe so that should work.

I'll tune up the template file loading so that if the template file is not found at the specific given path to try and look for a file of that same name alongside moi.exe too.

- Michael

Thanks Michael
I had wondered about the template although my laptop assigns the USB drive to F also.
Thanks for the changes and enjoying the new beta's
The Nside patch is brilliant
shayne

Hi Michael,
In the past you have provided a ScriptCopier to import script to a new beta. That is not needed anymore?
Thanks,
Gaston

Hi Gaston, it was never really needed, it was really started just to help one person in particular who did not know how to copy files with Windows Explorer.

All you really need to do is copy the entire contents of the \commands sub-folder from the previous beta into the new beta's \commands folder and say "no" to overwriting any files, that will do the exact same job as that script copier utility.

- Michael

Thanks Michael, that clears it up :)
Gaston

Hi Michael,

A little bug. In the menu bar the icon of N-Sided is lost.
You can fix it ?

And ... One more thing.
The final 3.0 version, when?

Many thanks,
Centropolis

Hi Centropolis, yes I haven't had a chance yet to make the icon for N-sided, I will definitely be making one for it before the final v3 release.

> The final 3.0 version, when?

I don't have any specific date set yet. I would like to have it out before summer is over but I'm not sure yet if that will happen or not.

- Michael

I made this one for myself, although it does loose it's descriptivness when in the UI. But I like to have a picture to mentally/automatically go to.

If you want to use it, or any other, put this in the icons folder, then edit the sidepane.htm file on this line to contain the name of the png image.

<moi:CommandButton icon="icons/Nsided.png" command="nsided"><moi:Text textid="Nsided"></moi:CommandButton>

New Icon installed... It could be a bit hard for some users...Previous experience installing construction line helps.
I also had to give myself permission to copy to the two subdirectories, ui and icons, by right clicking on them,
properties, security, edit, select my user account, and check permission box.

Good until the next beta...

I've just updated to this version and the mouse wheel no longer zooms in and out on any view. I'm running Mac OS 10.7.5 with a bluetooth magic mouse that works fine in all other applications. Any ideas? Also is it possible to have an user script folder not located inside the wine binary folder on Mac? This way my scripts will remain when I update versions, at the moment I have to go through the wine binary resources cdrive folder and copy out scripts and put them in the new binaries folder.

Hi Andrew, yeah there is a problem with the magic mouse wheel gesture in this version that's a side effect from the new multi-touch view handling.

I think I have a fix for that though, try updating your existing moi_touch.dylib file with the new version attached to this message, you need to right-click on the MoI app, then go into /drive_c/moi , that's where you'll find the previous version. Maybe rename the existing version something like moi_touch_old.dylib so you can restore it if the new one does not work right.

But hopefully with the new one in place it should fix that scrolling problem, please let me know if it does not.

The issue happened because the magic mouse is sort of a "semi"-multitouch device, where doing a scrolling gesture does something like sends out a message that a multitouch gesture is beginning but then says that no fingers are actually being used for the gesture, something a bit odd along those lines that I was not expecting to see.


> Also is it possible to have an user script folder not located inside the
> wine binary folder on Mac? This way my scripts will remain when I update
> versions, at the moment I have to go through the wine binary resources cdrive
> folder and copy out scripts and put them in the new binaries folder.

I do eventually want to make a script folder that could be in some central location, but there are some additional details to work out for doing that, like should they have version numbers of the minimum supported MoI version that is required for the script to run... So anyway there is some planning work to be done for making that happen. So far it has just not been a high priority to do that work yet because that file copying step going into the binary resources cdrive only takes something like 30 seconds to do and you only need to do it once for a new build. So it's an annoyance but such a low level and infrequent one that it just is easy for now to live with.

- Michael