Hi Michael,
is it possible to make the mirror function work so that if you turn on control points on the original curve and move one, to get the equivalent control point in the mirrored curve to move in a mirrored direction . I know that you can just delete the new half and rebuild it but sometimes it takes a lot of adjustments to get the shape you want.

regards Tim.

Hi Tim, this is possible by enabling history updates on the mirrored object.

To do this, select the new mirrored object (the _output_ from the mirror command), and run Edit / History / Enable update.

After that, you can then turn on control points of the original and edit it, and the mirrored object should update automatically.

History updates are not enabled by default for all the Transform commands. I'm a little bit worried about automatically turning on history all over the place, since it can sometimes lead to unexpected results if you wanted to edit the newly created objects as independent objects. Maybe mirror should be an exception though.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,

I was trying to update the wrong side! all is OK now, just what I wanted. I have not used History before, I will try it on a few more things

regards Tim.

Hi Michael,


A lot of what I design is symmetrical. It's easier to
develop a shape if you can see both sides change at once while
you're shaping mirrored curves. I used to use scale 1D to accomplish
this, but it was more work, so thanks for explaining one of
the uses for History. Now if I can remember, I won't have to use scale 1d
so much. ;-)

I also build a lot of things using a circles that I shape into other forms, because
lofts and sweeps seem to make cleaner surfaces when the number of
control points on the profile curves are the same. When I need to move control points symmetrically but in opposite directions on a closed curve, scale 1d still works well.

Jesse

Hi Jesse, I'm glad the mirror history technique will be useful to you.

I guess I probably should enable history for mirror by default.

In a future version I want to add more types of symmetry functionality that would allow for doing edits on a circle like you show there currently with scale1d, but instead just by dragging one side of it. It may be a bit difficult to set that up so it may be a while though.

- Michael

M.G. said
"History updates are not enabled by default for all the Transform commands. I'm a little bit worried about automatically turning on history all over the place, since it can sometimes lead to unexpected results if you wanted to edit the newly created objects as independent objects. Maybe mirror should be an exception though."

That's why you should think of adding a choise when copying, mirroring etc.
This choise should be INSTANCE or NEW
Instance: History update is on, no matter which command you choose
New : A copy or a mirroring of the initial object, a completely new object.
A instance->new transformation would be very nice to have too.

Just some ideas for V2.0

Hi JTB, yes definitely a good idea for 2.0. It will be a bit of work to get general support in for instances first of course...

- Michael