Hi Marv,
> 1/ How can I edit an extruded part. Like increasing its length. So far I've had to re-draw the part.
> Is there a plan to make MOI 3d parametric?
Right now there is not really any specific plan to make MOI parametric in the exact same way as something like SolidWorks. It's not really a major target goal for MoI to do the exact same job as those kinds of programs like SolidWorks, etc... Mostly that's because there are already a lot of choices for existing programs that do that kind of stuff.
Having said that however, I do want to make more kinds of editing tools in the future some of which will probably be influenced by that type of thing.
But if you need dimension driven sketch editing I'd just recommend using one of those various programs that do that stuff already.
There are various ways you can edit things in MoI currently though too, like for instance if you want to make a line longer you can select the line and edit its length in the properties panel size dropdown:
http://moi3d.com/2.0/docs/moi_command_reference11.htm#propertiespanel
There are also various Transform commands that can be used for editing things, including Transform > Scale > Scale1D which can scale things in one direction only with will have the effect of lengthening or shortening the whole thing.
If you need "constraints" where some other parts of the drawing maintain existing dimensions or angle and the shape kind of mutates to accomodate a change in length of only one single line in the drawing, then that's part of the overall mechanism that you'll want to be using a parametric CAD program right now instead of MoI. Eventually I'd like to experiment with having some kinds of basic constraints working in MoI as well but it's probably a ways off.
> 2/ When I save to a dxf I open it in CoralCad to dimension and print it. It opens OK but the image is tiny.
> When making it fit to screen the dimensions are huge I mean HUGE.
Sounds like maybe CorelCAD is not getting the units of the DXF file correct, is there an option at import time there to tell it what units the DXF file is in?
> 3/ I need a lesson in dimensioning. Currently if I need the length of a part I snap a new line then click it and read
> the dimension up by object styles. Must be a better way.
That's the main way to do it, you can also look at the distance readout in the bottom toolbar while you are drawing a line.
You can also install a plug-in called CustomDistance which will let you draw a line but then just show the line length and not actually create the line. That's available here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/#MeasureDistance
Anytime you are drawing new things in MoI, there are tools for entering the a particular size like controls for width and height of a rectangle or radius of a circle, etc... MoI is pretty oriented on this kind of aspect of modeling of drawing and creating new things and isn't as much focused on processing existing drawings by putting in dimensions, again there are other CAD programs where that is much more of a focus which would probably be a better fit currently. Annotation dimensions are another thing that I do expect to have in MoI eventually as well though too.
- Michael
