Hi Mike,

> Michael, just a suggestion: could it be possible, as a feature, to tell any of the added 'sync points' control
> curves to act as independent planar sections?
> This would be especially great for blend surfaces that twist and bend around complex edges.

I'm not really understanding how this would work, could you maybe describe in some more detail what an "independent planar section" would be?

The sync points will work in combination with planar sections already... When you set up sync points the blend will have a section right at those points.

Do you mean something like defining a new "up" direction at that location that's different than the main "up" direction? That would probably be quite complex, both in the UI for managing all kinds of different directions and also controlling how they ease-in/ease-out from the other ones.


> Of course, it would be cool to also allow for separate bulge. ;-)

Maybe in v4...

- Michael

Hi Matt,

> When extruding faces with the new tool the snapping to points, edges etc on the same solid does not seem to work? Any thoughts.

I experimented with that a little bit but it was kind of awkward... In order to do it, the original version of the object needed to be stuck in place in "faint wireframe" mode like it is in Transform > Move for example, but it's a little bit odd to have the wireframe drawn over top of parts of the generated object that's right in the same spot. Some way in the future to generate construction lines before you run a command might help.

Currently you could place a point object at your desired snap location before you run the command, or you could use the "Keep separate" checkbox and generate the extrusion as a separate object same as before and then do the boolean manually.

- Michael

Another great beta, thank you, Michael.

I've just noticed that doing a Tapered Extrude with Cap ends deselected isn't obeyed at the moment and a solid's created instead of just the sides.


Martin.

Hi, Michael.

Would this 'Planar sections' technique work within the Nsided tool for areas that come out slightly distorted?


Martin.

Hi Martin,

> I've just noticed that doing a Tapered Extrude with Cap ends deselected isn't obeyed at the
> moment and a solid's created instead of just the sides.

Yeah "Cap ends" is not used for tapered extrude currently, you should see the "Cap ends" checkbox itself disappears once you activate the tapered extrude mode.


> Would this 'Planar sections' technique work within the Nsided tool for areas that come
> out slightly distorted?

I don't think I can apply it to Nsided because the method of construction that Nsided uses is much different than Blend, NSided does not do a fully cross section lofting style construction method like Blend does.

- Michael

Thanks for replying to both questions, Michael.

Planar sections looks like a very elegant solution to these eyes of mine, hence the Nsided question.

Is the position critical for best effect and can several Planar sections be applied per blend - it looks like they can, but am I simply repositioning the Planar section when I apply it multiple times?

 

Martin.

Hi Martin,

> Is the position critical for best effect and can several Planar sections be applied per blend - it looks
> like they can, but am I simply repositioning the Planar section when I apply it multiple times?

Yeah definitely the position is important and needs to suit the particular shape being used. There is only one that can be set though, if you do it multiple times it is just changing the one "up" direction.

The direction defines a family of planes, then the particular plane within that family depends on the location of the ends of the blend cross-section.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Still on Planar Sections for Blend, can one use a curve to set the Planar Section direction and will that direction have history so if I want to tweak the direction by moving the curve will the Blend update?

-

Hi Danny,

> Still on Planar Sections for Blend, can one use a curve to set the Planar Section direction and will that
> direction have history so if I want to tweak the direction by moving the curve will the Blend update?

Sorry no, the Planar sections direction is taken just as an x,y,z valued vector direction, there isn't any way to attach it to a curve like you're describing.

- Michael

Okay, Thanks.

-

Hi Michael,
do not forget the measuring tools. You have already written with version 2 that will be possible in version 3, now 4, etc ... for sure there is nothing, a draft, a roadmap?
I'm frustrated to use another software to measure.
Moi is good piece of software but I will not upgrade to version 3.

Thanks

Hi Herbert, sorry that version 3 did not address what you needed! I don't really have a specific roadmap, I tend to like to work in a more fluid manner and let what most users are asking for most frequently to guide me. Mostly that has placed the focus on improvements to modeling tools.

I do hope to add in a set of measuring tools in the future though, I think that's likely to happen in v4. I can't really promise specifically what will happen in the future though, like I said I don't really like to work on a fixed roadmap.

- Michael

Hi, Michael.

I've tried to shell the lower face of the item in the attached file at various widths from around 0.1mm to about 2mm wall thickness, but MoI seems to be struggling a little and I can't really see where the problem lies. There is also an issue with insetting the same face (again around 2mm), in that MoI creates a separate inset solid. Can you point me in the right direction for sorting this out please, or is it just a current limitation of the kernel?


Thanks, Martin.

Hi Martin, sometimes you can find problem areas for shelling by doing an offset instead, Shell basically does an offset type operation followed by a boolean, when you just do the offset by itself you will often get a result but you'll see where it's having problems.

So in this case, if I do an Offset with distance: 0.1mm with Flip turned on, then delete the original object, you'll get a result but you'll see that there are a few weird holes in a couple of the surfaces, those seem to have messed up trimming boundaries.

It probably is possible to fix those up by doing some untrimming and retrimming of the surfaces but it's probably easier to try and do the Shell in a different CAD program that has a more robust shelling mechanism, the one in MoI is just not very sophisticated I'm afraid. ViaCAD can be a good companion to use with MoI for shelling.

- Michael

Hi Martin, or actually in your case here it's not too difficult to repair the messed up offset because the messed up parts can be just deleted and copied from one of the good parts. Also because your pieces are all meeting up smoothly it should be possible to offset the surfaces individually and have their offsets match up with each other.

That's how I build the attached shelled version, I did an offset of just these separated individual surfaces (that is a more simple operation than offsets of joined surfaces which then have a lot of boundary processing to be done) with Distance = 0.5mm and Flip on:



Then I used Transform > Array > Circular to make the other faces from those, joined them all together (needed to scale down by 1/10 in size first before all would join), then trimmed off the bottom piece with a line to make it coplanar to the original part, built a planar surface between the 2 rings and then joined the outside part with the inner part to make the attached shelled result.

So anyway these types of steps can get you a final shelled result when the regular shell operation fails which is not particularly unusual I'm afraid.

Hope that helps!

- Michael

Hi, Michael.

On this occasion I used ViaCAD to do the shell, but I did come back to MoI, ran through the tutorial you showed and succeeded at the first attempt. I was pretty pleased that it didn't take too long to do either.


Thanks for your help!

Martin.

Hi Michael.

I don't know if this is classed as a bug or not, but I'll mention it anyway:-)

The following seems to be the case if a face is selected for extrusion: - If I first extrude a cube from a rectangle and then draw a simple curve coming off a top corner to use with Set path within the Extrude tool, then I have found the solid doesn't update if I go on to change the shape of either the path curve or the rectangle. Selecting the edges of the same face for extrusion works as expected although it creates a separate solid.


Martin.

Hi Martin,

> The following seems to be the case if a face is selected for extrusion: - <...>

Yes, unfortunately that's just a limitation on how the history mechanism currently works.

The history function is only able to work when all the inputs that went into the operation are able to be found in the current model.

In your case here the face that you selected as the input into the extrusion isn't present after doing the auto-booleaned extrusion, it's eliminated during the boolean operation. If you check the "Keep separate" option before you click "Set path" you should then get a result that will be able to update as you were looking for but the pieces will all be separate instead of booleaned together.

In the future I want to overhaul the history mechanism to keep a kind of parallel separate database of all previous objects in it so that operations like you're trying to do will work with history. That will involve a major effort though.

- Michael

Hi Michael.

It's not a big deal for me, because by selecting the top edges of the first solid rather than just its top face, this allows for the second solid to be updated either by resizing the rectangle or reshaping the extrude path curve. It was only when I found that selecting a face acted differently that I wondered if something needed a tweak.

Cheers.

Martin.