Hi ...

I can't seem to get the line to stick to surfaces. No matter my settings the line goes to the ground plane (z=0).

Help please

thanks

Edit: It seems I had a setting wrong (though I don't remember setting it). I set the snaps to default and now it works.

cheers,
eric

Hi eric - are you drawing in the 3D view or in one of the ortho/2D (top/front/right) views?

It's intentional that when drawing in a 2D view that picked points do not stick on to the middle of surfaces there - if they did then it would become difficult to draw regular 2D z=0 things in many situations, especially when there were a lot of surfaces covering the entire screen.

But when you go into the 3D view and pick points there, that's when your points will stick directly onto the middle of surfaces, it's basically assumed that when you are working in a 2D view it means that you're trying to draw 2D things aligned with that view but if you're working in the 3D view it allows points to be placed more freely and not so much forced down to the construction plane.

It is possible to adjust some settings in moi.ini to make the 2D views behave the same as the 3D views, let me know if you want to try that. I don't really recommend it though since it then makes it harder to do regular 2D drawing in the 2D views.

Does that explain what you are seeing or are you running into something else?

- Michael

Hi Michael ...

I do think that is what I was running into. I was trying to find a way to set the snap to surface in the plan view. After I reset the snaps back to default and worked in the 3d view MoI performed just fine. I was laying out paths on a multi building site and wanted to be on the land surface and still layout a combination of 2d dimensionable lines and arcs.

I finally used 2d for layout and then adjusted individual points vertically. This is still in the preliminary layout stages illustrated in a 3d model form so I am finding it a bit of a challenge.
Learning a lot and finding most 'terrain' programs (including Rhino 'patch') to be pretty inaccurate in interpreting contours. I mostly use contour lines at correct vertical intervals and then 'sweep' along them with MoI ... the results are usually pretty good.

cheers,
eric