A new Jun-12-2007 beta is now available from the download page at
http://moi3d.com/download.htm .
New stuff:
Added LWO file export. This should help for getting N-gon mesh geometry into Modo and LightWave.
Adobe Illustrator file import. MoI will now grab out the curves from .ai, .eps, or .pdf files. Since Illustrator version 9, AI has used a pretty complex PDF-based file format. MoI will usually read stuff out from those files too, but it may miss some stuff in more complex ones. If that happens, try saving as a version 8 or lower AI file if possible, or as an EPS. Those tend to have a somewhat more simple structure and don't have as much stuff hidden away in different encoded chunks.
Fixed STL export bug - previously it produced an incorrect STL file structure when exporting multiple objects. Some programs would still read all the objects but some would stop after the first one. Also switched STL to save using a binary STL file type which is much more compact than the text variant that was previously used. You can change back to the text-file type under Options / Import/Export.
Completely rewrote Construct / Network to work better. Previously there could often be a kind of lump near the "seam" point of a closed network - this has been eliminated. Also previously networks using many curves with different structures in them could often fail to generate a result because the output was too excessively dense with control points. There is now an automatic simplification process that solves this problem - networks that previously failed should work now.
Tuned up Loft so that the "closed" option works better.
New "profiles" option in Loft and Sweep. Both Loft and Sweep need to combine multiple profile curves into one common structure for the surface. Previously this was done only by combining together all the curve structures which can generate a large number of points in the resulting surface, which could cause failures when it got to a certain density (particularly if many points were clustered very close to each other). There is a new mechanism in place to prevent this problem, and it is controllable with the "Profiles" option. The default is "Auto" which makes an automatic decision between "Exact" and "Refit" modes. Exact mode is the old method that combines everything together - it preserves the shape very well but leads to high point density. Refit is a new mechanism that approximates the original curves in a way that produces much fewer points. However in some situations the result may have slight wiggles in it. The final option is #Points mode - this lets you type in a specific number of points and the profiles are reconstructed just through that many sampled points. This produces very smooth results, but the shapes will be only a somewhat rough approximation of your originals and may deviate from them by a fair amount. Whew, I wish this area was not so complicated to explain, however to sum it up, just leave it as "auto" mode most of the time, if you get some wrinkles in the surface then try switching to "exact" or "#Points" mode.
New Options dialog holds all the options in one place. It shouldn't be necessary to edit the moi.ini directly anymore.
Updated mesh save dialog - changed "apply to planes" setting to allow for 3 states. Apply to curved will only apply the maximum length to curved surfaces only, not to planar ones. Apply to planes will only apply it to planar surfaces and not curved ones, and apply to all does it to everything.
Updated history to make it interruptable. Previously you had to wait for history to be recalculated on every single movement of your mouse. This was awkward if you had a complex history calculation taking place, it made editing the original curves very jerky. This has been changed now so that moving your mouse will edit the original curves fluidly and history will update when it has a chance to calculate if you hold the mouse still or finish the edit, instead of being forced to recalc on every single mouse move.
Updated display mesher to handle large surfaces better. When it encounters a large surface, it will automatically reduce the meshing angle and turn off add details to inflections to prevent large display meshes from consuming too much memory. Also the memory consumption spike during the meshing process has been reduced by 1/3.
Updated helix command - new "Flat spiral" option.
Updated revolve to handle the case where there is a planar shape being revolved, but the picked axis is slightly off from the shape's plane. This gets automatically tuned up now.
Updated Edit/Extend - extend can now drive history updates. For example if you extrude a line, and then extend the line, the extrusion will update. Previously this didn't work.
Update Hide - made it so a second click on the "Hide" button is the same thing as pushing "Done" or right-click. So 2 clicks on hide will show all objects.
Update invert selection. If there is a drilled-in selection to face or edge sub-objects, invert will only flip the selection state of those sub-objects instead of everything in the scene, similar to how select all works.
Tune up to TrueType text. Some letters could fail to project due to small deviations in curve tangents between different segments. These are now tuned up.
Meshing tune-up to improve quad output when using Quads and Triangles mode. MoI will convert a few more types of n-gons into quads for this mode now.
Various other minor bug fixes...
- Michael
