Hi there. First off, I'd like to say another big thank you to Michael. I've just purchased a license and on the one hand I'm thrilled to be using MOI, on the other I'm also amazed at how difficult to use pretty much every other package is in this day and age.

Anyway, I have 2 questions at the moment. I'm currently modelling a case that I plan to 3d print for a real world object. I took pictures of the object from 3 sides and have brought them into MOI. I sized them by eye and have got them right, but I was wondering if there was an automatic way to scale them. For example, Autodesk Fusion 360 has a feature to scale background images where you draw 2 points on the image and then enter what the distance should be between them and then it scales the image to that size. It's very handy.

My second question is about the numeric entry area at the bottom and its uses. I can make it do some things I want, but it's not clear to me how to do something like reset an object if I don't like the things I've done. Like if I draw a line, then rotate it arbitrarily, and then want to reset its rotation to how it originally was... It's not clear to me how to do that. If it was at a simple angle like aligned with an axis I can grab a modifier corner and it seems to scale and rotate at the same time and I can snap it to where I want and then I can re-set the length numerically but that doesn't seem to be the right way to do it. Alternatively I can click the rotate arrow but that enables free rotate and that doesn't scale, but it also doesn't seem to snap to grids or objects.

Thanks!

One quick reference about images:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6417.1

- Brian

Hi Supagoat, for your image part, check out the part about the "Align" image option in the linked discussion above. That allows you to do the kind of registration that you're asking about, with picking 2 points on the image and then 2 points in the model to match them to. That can control both rotation and scale as well. For making it a specific distance, either snap the model reference points onto a line that you've already created of the proper size, or you can also use distance constraint for picking those 2 points by typing in your distance value and then the second point will be placed at that distance from the first one.


> Like if I draw a line, then rotate it arbitrarily, and then want to reset its rotation to how it originally was...

In this case you could just use Undo to go back a step if you put in the wrong rotation.

But objects in MoI do not have any sort of in built "base position" to them so if you need to rotate something back to some specific position you would generally use the Transform > Rotate command and snap the first reference point onto the endpoint of the line, and then place the end reference point at the position you want.

If you have something like a line that's just pointing in some non-axis-aligned rotation and that particular rotation is important for you, it's probably best to save a copy of that line so that you can load it right back into place later on.

Generally the edit frame is the convenient and quick way to do transforms, but also the tools on the Transform menu on the side pane give you some more detailed options for doing something specific. Like the Transform > Rotate can make it easier to pick each significant point that controls the rotation (the origin, the anchor point and the target point) with individual picks.

- Michael