Hi Rico, I'm glad you're getting more use out of MoI for modeling now!
As you've seen above you can get bending or tapering done currently using the Flow command.
For bending it's fairly straightforward, you draw a straight line down the middle of your shape, and then a curved line for how you want the bent result. Then select your object you want to bend, run Transform > Deform > Flow, then select the line as the base for the Flow and the bent curve as the target for the Flow and that will bend your object along that curve.
This allows for a whole lot of flexibility since you can bend along any kind of curve, not just necessarily an arc shape.
See here for some bending examples:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3628.246
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5097.2
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5130.5
Tapering can also be done with Flow, using the other mode of Flow where you select base and target _surfaces_ instead of using curves. This is kind of more involved, Burr shows the method above though.
In the future I want to add a "cage edit" tool which I think will be a more convenient way to do tapering as well. But until the time that is ready the method Burr shows above is how you can get it done now.
Curve to curve flow works well enough for bending that I don't think it's likely that there will be a separate Bend tool (well maybe as an optional plug-in). You just get so much more flexibility when the bent shape is defined by a curve that you can draw and customize rather than only bending around and arc shape. One of the main strategies for keeping MoI to have a light and fluid feeling in its UI is to try and get broader use out of a smaller number of tools...
- Michael
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