Hi Will,

> Is there a way when drawing a curve to "move it out from the origin in cases like this??

One possibility is to place the first point in the top view away from the origin, then continue drawing in the front view. Your curve will end up planar to the front view but going through the initial point you picked. I do want to add some construction plane manipulation tools for a future version which would probably be more exactly what you need here.


> it usually ends up on the inside of my model (at 0,0), requiring me to then hide my surfaces

Hmmm, normally this shouldn't be a problem that the curve is inside your model. But it looks like you have turned off "Display hidden-line curves" and "Display hidden-line edges". Go to Options / View, and turn those back on (at least the one for curves) and you will be able to select your curve even though it is inside the model. I guess the part that is not explicitly mentioned in that option is that not only does it enable the display, but it is implicit that if it is displayed then it is also selectable. That's one reason why I haven't made it a big priority yet to add a wireframe mode, because hidden-line mode already gives you most of the capabilities of wireframe mode.


> Anyway, lofting a non planar curve unfortunately doesn't cap the ends

Yeah, the problem is with a non-planar curve there isn't really one single well defined surface that can be put there, there are usually different possibilities with different amounts of bulging, etc... Particularly if there are more than 4 curves. With a planar end it is clear what the shape should be.

I suppose it might be reasonable in the case of 3 or 4 curves to do a Network surface as the "cap"...


> I'm wondering if there's anyway to directly shell surfaces like these

Hmmm, I don't think so... Looking at the top view, it looks like your protrusion there is not a constant thickness. I mean that the outside curve has a different curvature than the inside part (as viewed from the top). This generally means that shell won't work for this situation, since it creates things using offset and offset constructs parallel shapes.

Since the outside shape is no longer a sphere surface, you will definitely need to use something like Network to create a new surface out there... Maybe in the future it will be possible for me to add some more options to several of the commands to specify that you're doing a protrusion from a base surface. If there was a way to specify that then it could probably do the boolean stage for you. But it will be a while before I'll be able to work on that.

- Michael

Thanks for your consideration Michael - YES, I do believe I have the ghosted lines turned off - and I definitely didn't realize that I could select using the ghostings! If I had I prolly wouldn't have turned them off!

YES it would have been great having a network cap to those surfaces! Perhaps as you said, there might be something like this in the future.

I included the full picture in my post just to give you an idea of what it is I'm attempting to construct. Of course the picture has artist drawn perspective distortion (which in itself may not be accurate) but it was still easy for me to develop a decent rendition (imo) using the orthogonal views.

Being that this project is my way of teaching myself MOI, I'm sure if I were to do it all over again I'd do it much easier (it's always easier the 2nd time around!)

But yes, I believe that was the answer - if the shape has 3-4 curves on the end just attempt to network close them into a solid - that's certainly what I'm doing anyway!

-Will

Just a quick note - if you find yourself wanting to toggle hidden line display on or off frequently, put this command on a shortcut key:

script: /* Toggle hidden line display */ moi.view.showHiddenLines = !moi.view.showHiddenLines

EDIT: updated script to work with v2.

- Michael

Thanks Michael for the script - added!

(Boy these script drops around here are like nuggets 'o gold!)

-Will