A new v3 beta (version Aug-1-2013) is now available for download here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm , also linked to from the download page on the main web site.

New stuff:


Multi-edge blends - Update Blend so that multiple edge curves can be selected on each side of the blend rather than only one edge on each side as before.

Loft start/end in point - Enable point objects (created under Draw curve > More > Point) to be selected for the start and/or end of a loft.

Add points to surfaces - make Edit > Add pt work with surfaces, the surface should be preselected before running add point.

Implement PDF export - PDF now supported as a writable file type for making 2D PDF files. Style line color and styles becoming PDF "layers" (optional content groups) are also supported.

Update AI export with layers and colors - For AI export write MoI styles out as layers in the AI file and also set the line color to the style color as well.

Adobe Illustrator clipboard support - Enable copy/paste from MoI to Adobe Illustrator (and possibly other 2D illustration programs). MoI can now paste in either AI or PDF formats that are on the clipboard, and you can set up keyboard shortcuts to copy curve data from MoI into either AI or PDF format for pasting into Illustrator. Use the following scripts for setting up the clipboard transfer from MoI to Illustrator:
script: /* Copy AI format to clipboard */ moi.geometryDatabase.copyToClipboardAI();
script: /* Copy PDF format to clipboard */ moi.geometryDatabase.copyToClipboardPDF();
Note - this has not really been tested with Illustrator on OSX yet, please let me know if does not work there.

New Angle parameter for Cone command - Add in an angle input for the cone command, you can enter in either height or angle now, if you enter in height the angle will update to match, and if you enter in the angle value, the height will be calculated from that. The angle is the full angle of the cone from one side to the opposite side of the cone. Requested on the forum here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5921.1

Implement "Calculation failed" UI similar to the "Calculating..." message, but that is displayed if there was no output generated. Requested on the forum here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5803.1 .

Update project command - Add "Delete input objects" checkbox and "Use CPlane" button to Project command, requested on the forum here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5815.1 .

Update drawing on reversed planes - Make the snap plane for a reversed view use a view-relative cplane so drawing a background image in a reversed view will not make a reversed image. Also makes width and height values in reverse views for commands like rectangle to be view local.

Updated align command - fix bounding box caching issue which was slowing down the Align command after the previous update to it to use cplane coordinates.

Updated DXF export for better compatibility - Avoid writing an extrusion direction of straight down in the negative world z axis direction since some open source DXF readers have bugs when generating the coordinate systems of that particular direction. Fixes a problem reported through e-mail with circles not coming through correctly to several open source CAD programs.

Updated DXF importer to not error out when reading in technically illegal DXF files from software that writes polyface mesh data with more than 32767 faces or vertices in them. Fixes a problem reported through e-mail by Son Kim where a file saved from Modo would not import in MoI because of an illegal vertex count which previously stopped the entire file read.

Updated PDF import - Fix bug where nested transformations were not working correctly with PDF import. Fixes a bug reported through e-mail.

Fixed a bug with the closed curve seam matcher to use arc length distances in its twist analysis step, fixes an incorrect direction result in sweep reported on the forum by Mike Maynard where it was making a twisted sausage like result because of incorrect flipping determination.

Fixed a Solids++ bug with surface deformation used the Flow command where it was possible for some surfaces to not get refined as much as they were supposed to, fixes a bug with badly formed geometry getting created during Flow reported through e-mail by Mike Maynard.

Fixed a Solids++ bug with analytic cylinder/cone intersection that was a regression from MoI v2.

Fixed a bug with Trim where brep fragments would in some cases revert to default styles in the "Pick which piece to discard" stage of the command.

Updated startup template file loading - if the template file can't be found at its full path location, also look for it alongside moi.exe and in the appdata folder as well. This can help when running MoI from a portable USB key.

Fixed a crash bug in trim.

Fixed a problem with IGES/SAT/STEP format exports where a non-manifold structure on one trim boundary could trigger an error and bail out the entire file save.

Fixed object name bug - Fix bug where after blanking out the object name, the name could get reconstituted from Rhino round trip data. Fixes a bug reported in the forum here: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5847.4 .

Fixed a Solids++ bug that caused a crash in STEP import on surfaces that had their trimming boundaries entirely made of really tiny sized curves.

Update 3DM file properties - avoid writing the current user name to the header of the saved 3DM file.

Update OSX 10.6 incompatibility with multi-touch processing - Don't try to initialize touch functionality on OSX 10.6, it does not work reliably there. Fixes bug in previous v3 beta where it would sporadically fail on OSX 10.6.

Fixed a filleting bug sent by Mike Maynard through e-mail where the update from the last beta resulted in a strange bulge in a particular fillet.

Updated the slider control so it will fire an onmousemovevaluechange="...." script event for every mouse move, so you'll be able to put in a script handler for that event instead of just onvaluechange="" if you want to get more interactive events.



Various other small fixes...


- Michael

... updated the slider control so it will fire an onmousemovevaluechange="...." script event for every mouse move, so you'll be able to put in a script handler for that event instead of just onvaluechange="" if you want to get more interactive events.

Hi Brian, oops left that one out, I've put it in the main list now, thanks!

- Michael

Woot!

Fantastic update Michael.


-Shane

I found a bug in the first sentance of this thread:

"""""""""A new v3 beta (version Mar-17-2013) is now available for download here:"""""""""""""""""

:o

Hi Burr,

> I found a bug in the first sentance of this thread:

These are my favorite bugs because they're easy to fix! :) Thanks for the heads up.

- Michael

Whew! Now MoI will no longer give us the "sausage." :-o

Now cut and paste to AI! I'll definitely find that especially useful.

And Blend... Christmas came early again! :-)

Very well done on this release Michael! Thanks!

Hi Michael

Adobe Illustrator clipboard support

...that's SUPER handy and works quite well..in both directions!

Thanks,
Marco

>..in both directions!

He's right!

Hol-y-cow. Very useful, indeed.

Hi Beetle, since your post was not asking about something specific to this new beta release, I moved it to its own thread over here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6100.1

- Michael

re: copy from MoI to Illustrator - using either AI format or PDF format should work but you'll probably want to use AI format since Illustrator does not read layers from PDF files.

According to Adobe, Acrobat is the main thing to use for editing PDF files and it reads all sorts of PDF specific stuff that Illustrator won't really deal with (see Adobe discussion thread: http://forums.adobe.com/thread/509192).

But possibly for other illustration programs or other more PDF specific programs like Acrobat using PDF on the clipboard would be good.

- Michael

OSX 10.8.4 here running on a Macpro with Illustrator CS6 (v16.0.4)

Copy/paste .PDF to Illustrator is working perfectly, colors are preserved

Copy/paste .AI is working in the MoI 3D side (selecting the view and fit to page or not) but doesn't fill the clipboard in AI (paste is greyed out in AI)

Copy/paste from AI to MoI 3D is working but lines are exported as two lines (for example a 1pt width line is 2 lines in moi with a small gap between them like if it was treated as a surface in AI)

But that's already a huuuuuuge step forward, huge time saver !

Thanks for everything :)

We'll train another person here and buy him a license soon !

OS X 10.8.4 and Illustrator CS3 (13.0.1) here.

Copy/Paste from MoI to AI works for PDF but not for AI format. Just as Shapenoid described above.

Copy/Paste vector art from AI, iDraw.app or Sketch.app to MoI works very well. I see no double lines issue.


Thank you for this great update!

Awesome Beta!!!

The <-> clipboard illustrator is a very productive feature and It seems to work fine.
I really appreciate this detail and also colors retained in AI files.

I wonder if it would be possible to have the copy to pdf without the popup dialog?
It could take top view and no scale to page by default.

Marc

Hi Marc,

> I wonder if it would be possible to have the copy to pdf without the popup dialog?
> It could take top view and no scale to page by default.

I'll see about making it possible to optionally pass in parameters to the script method that does the copy, so that you can avoid the dialog.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

since i don't have Illustrator i thought i test my little iDraw app, from the Mac App Store, with pdf to clipboard from MoI and voilá it works nicely! :-)

Best regards
Stefan

Thanks Michael,

I imagine it must've been complicated implementing the Pdf file export?
Not being the most friendly format and all...

Marc

Hi Marc,

> I imagine it must've been complicated implementing the Pdf file export?
> Not being the most friendly format and all...

I found a good library that helped me quite a bit, but yeah still it needed quite a bit of study of some of the details of the PDF file structure, it is really pretty complex. The reference document for it is 1310 pages long!

But a lot of things use it so it should hopefully be useful to have it in MoI.

- Michael

Hi DesuDeus, I've installed the OSX Illustrator CS6 trial to investigate these OSX clipboard issues.

One thing you wrote was:

> Copy/paste from AI to MoI 3D is working but lines are exported as two lines (for example a 1pt width line is 2
> lines in moi with a small gap between them like if it was treated as a surface in AI)

I can't seem to repeat this over here, when I draw a line with 1pt with in Illustrator and then copy it and paste it into MoI, I only seem to get one line not any doubled lines...

Does it happen when some particular other properties are set on the line like a kind of line pattern or anything like that?

I think I can probably get the AI format transfer working too, that's the next thing I'm investigating.

- Michael