Hello,

I'm new to MoI but not to 3D animations (TDI, 3Ds, Truspace,...)
Congratulations, it's a very fast and easy tool to build models.
I don't know whether this question has already been asked.
Can I create my own functions and menus ?

For example for generating a wall with windows in it.

Input
1 dimensions of the wall : height, width, thickness
2 number of windows
3 position of the first window
4 distance between the windows

Output
a wall with the appropriate number of windows etc....

I wonder how this could be done ?
Any help and information is welcome.

Thank you
best regards
Ralf

Hi Ralf,

MoI is not really set up to do this type of extension work right now. It is theoretically possible, for example Petr has done a couple of custom commands here: http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/

But I don't really expect to have an official "SDK" type extension mechanism ready for version 1.0. It takes quite a lot of additional work to document and support that type of thing, and the documentation for just the basic use of MoI is not even complete yet.

So it is going to be a while into the future before it will be possible to put in the work to make that type of extensions work very well.

If you need to do walls and windows quickly, I'd recommend using something more specialized for architecture like Revit or Chief Architect, something like that. Since those are focused exclusively on architecture they have a lot of pre-packaged functions for placing walls, windows, and doors as sort of smart encapsulated objects.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

thank you for your quick reply.
The link seem to be very interesting showing how things could be done.
I understand the intention of MoI. But you could solve more problems with it.
The wall and windows problem was just an example.

Thank you
- Ralf

Hi Ralf, certainly I understand that being able to do custom plug-ins and extensions would help with a lot of stuff.

I do want to do it eventually, it's just a matter of limited time.

There isn't enough time to do every single thing especially for the 1.0 version, so some things have to be prioritized over others. For right now I've put basic functionality and documentation for just running the current feature set of MoI as a higher priority than setting up a full extension mechanism, especially because including full documentation and technical support for doing extensions will take a lot of time.

- Michael

If you have Lightwave, there's always LWCAD: http://www.wtools3d.com/

This package works very well and the upcoming 2.5 update has added even more architectural features.

I had pretty much stopped using Modeler until LWCAD became available...

-Will

Hi Michael,

you're absolutely right.
Defining and supporting an API
is very time-consuming.
But I think it's not a bad idea to prepare the
structure of the software to be able to implement
an API in a later version.

By the way, if I can help you in any way,
testing for example, let me know.
As I mentioned I'm familiar with a lot of cad systems
AutoCAD, MDT, Inventor, Nemetschek Allplan (Architecture),
RoboCAD, Spirit (Architecture), Truespace, TDI, Alias Wavefront,...

best regards
- Ralf

Hi Will,

Unfortunately I don't have lightwave.
But thank you for the information.

- Ralf

Hi Ralf,

> But I think it's not a bad idea to prepare the structure of the software
> to be able to implement an API in a later version.

Yeah, I have actually done some of this. There is an internal API that I use when making new features, there are things like point picking and object selection services, etc...

You can see one portion of how this works by looking in the "commands" subdirectory under the main MoI directory. In there you will see the script file and UI file for every command. The script file controls the flow of a command and it calls various parts of the MoI object model to accomplish different tasks and gather inputs.

It's just going to be a while before I'm able to clean it up and especially document it to make it a public API.

- Michael