Max ...

Yes ... those are the ones I wish for, too.

I wince a little every time I have leave MoI to finish my working drawings.

cheers,
eric

Hi Max, I do think that all those things will get into MoI eventually, but re:

> at the moment it lacks some very important features that are mandatory to start
> competing with other software on the market.

It's just never really been a primary focus for MoI to have to "compete" against other software, the focus in MoI is about trying to make it quick and easy to do simple things. If you need to do things outside of that for your particular field of work, then it's totally normal and expected that you would use MoI in combination with other software that does those other things. As long as MoI does something useful for you, that makes it a useful tool. It does not have to do everything you need in order to be useful.

I hope that sort of explains things a bit, as to why MoI does not yet have those particular features that you need.

However having said that, I am definitely trying to add to MoI's feature set over time and eventually I think it will do all these things you are asking about.

Until then using MoI alongside other programs is actually what I expect for people to do.


> And you know that, you cannot deny that you HAVE to switch to another software for that.

I've never denied it, in fact it's what I recommend !!

- Michael

Hi.
It's not like I am saying that all that stuff is needed to work better, that is just a list of what in my opinion is missing to make it a complete package: if I would have to choose strictly, a big optimization in our workflow would be having Instances, Nested-Groups and Cutting-Planes. We have to be able to output all the drawings we need directly from MoI. Then, of course, we have our favorite software for lay-outing, dimensioning and printing, so these things are not top-priority for many of us.

> It's just never really been a primary focus for MoI to have to "compete" against other software

That's a shame, MoI has everything it takes to compete with other software, and with just few new features, it should compete with the head held high. You are doing an excellent work. You should be more proud of yourself!

Thank you,
M.

Added:

• A manifold mesh check and vertex weld treshold value in the polygon format export dialogs. Now sometimes an exported mesh turns out not to be manifold, but after auto-selecting the non-manifold edges of a mesh in Blender and welding the vertices with a certain treshold, the mesh becomes manifold and suitable for 3D printing.

Added:

• Saving of mesh export settings with MoI 3DM files.

I find Moi so much easier to use than Rhino but I find myself still using Rhino for everything. The three things I would wish for in Moi are blocks, importing of meshes (many times I have to create around another model and most times it's mesh.. ug!), and the use of rhino plug-ins. OMG imagine Moi + grasshopper or Evolute! *DROOL*

Hi DrNo - use of Rhino plug-ins is pretty much not at all feasible because plug-ins are very specifically built to run inside of a particular environment, so they are highly dependent on everything being set up exactly as it is in Rhino. Various services like how the UI works, how point picking works, how selection works, etc.. etc.. are all somewhat different in MoI than in Rhino. Direct plug-in compatibility would only be possible if MoI was set up to be an almost 100% exact clone of Rhino and of course if it was set up like that then what would be the point of having MoI in the first place...

- Michael

Well pardon me for saying, and I mean this as a compliment, but isn't Moi supposed to be? Moi has many of the same features and works the same way. Both NURBs(3dm). If you've used one you can pretty much master the other. The main difference IMO is that Moi is much more streamline, easier to use and better than Rhino. I was modeling something in Rhino earlier and I realized that what took me 3 steps in Rhino I could have done in 1 step with Moi, but I was also incorporating meshes so I was forced to use it. If Moi gets any better and more well known, Rhino is going to be in trouble!

I think a more valid question is, if there's Moi(v4+), what's the point of having Rhino?

I realize the plug-in thing is huge and not likely but there's always that mesh idea. ;)

Hi DrNo,

> Well pardon me for saying, and I mean this as a compliment, but isn't Moi supposed to be?

Not really... MoI is focused on a much different kind of use case - Rhino is meant to be comfortable to AutoCAD users, while MoI was designed to be comfortable to people without any CAD experience at all. Those are pretty significantly different primary targets...


> Moi has many of the same features and works the same way. Both NURBs(3dm).

Well yeah, but that's just because I designed and created both of them. So certainly there's a lot of the same base "Design DNA" between both.


> The main difference IMO is that Moi is much more streamline, easier to use and better
> than Rhino. I was modeling something in Rhino earlier and I realized that what took me
> 3 steps in Rhino I could have done in 1 step with Moi, <...>

Yeah, since I created Rhino I am particularly familiar with various design problems that I ended up baking into it with and I've designed many of those out when creating MoI. In a certain sense MoI is kind of like a next generation Rhino (solving problems in Rhino's overall workflow approach) but not quite because like I wrote above the primary targets of who is really meant to be using each one is pretty different and also impacts a lot of things.

For Rhino there is an emphasis on just providing a lot of functionality and tools and not worrying so much about the complexity that results in having so many things present in the software. MoI has a very strong emphasis on keeping the UI to have a light and fluid feel and it's more important for MoI to protect that quality than it is to just pile on features, even if it means that it does not work for certain kinds of workflows like your mesh based one for example.

- Michael

Mine are:
- additional import/export options. I find it odd that MOI is sold with Alibre Design/Geomagic through the Geomagic people, and yet neither can read the other's native files. I'd love to see Geomagic import/export, at a minimum.
- ability to really customize the workspace. Call me old fashioned, but I'm sorta lost without the File/Edit commands and everything else being at the top of the screen, like so many original Windows programs were and many still are. I'd like to be able to do that.
- perhaps I'm missing it, but I really like (in most other CAD programs) having the physical dimensions displayed as I create a line, for example; the length of the line is displayed on screen as I pull and place the line. Or, when I create a circle, I like having the circumference displayed as I enlarge the circle. This would allow for more precise sizing and placement.

Hi Bob,

> - perhaps I'm missing it, but I really like (in most other CAD programs) having the
> physical dimensions displayed as I create a line, for example; the length of the line is
> displayed on screen as I pull and place the line.

The distance between the last 2 picked points (and so for lines it's the length of the line you are drawing), is displayed in the distance input in the UI which is located here on the bottom command bar:




> Or, when I create a circle, I like having the circumference displayed as I enlarge the circle.
> This would allow for more precise sizing and placement.

For a circle there is not any readout of circumference, but there is one of radius or diameter in the command options area, which will update as you move your mouse around:



For most commands the feedback will be either in that XYZ / distance / angle control on the bottom which applies to all point picks, or to a control in the command options area which has stuff specific to the individual command.

Hope this helps,

- Michael

Hi Bob,

Additionally, if you want to know the length of a circular — or any other — curve, you can use Michael's easy UnwrapCurve plug-in command:

http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5136.1

UnwrapCurve is also very useful in conjunction with the Flow function, to avoid distortion in the flowed result.

Have a nice weekend.

— Metin

Thanks all,

Sorry I wasn't more clear, I meant having the datum displayed on the screen with the lines and circles. Its like a HUD on a fighter jet - you want to keep your eyes on one thing, not going back and forth. I'm probably nitpicking an outstanding program, but whether I'm using Geomagic or another CAD program, having the geometry displayed on the main screen with the shapes is simply easier for these old (and, repidly aging!) eyes.

Robert

PS. Geomagic interoperability would be outstanding, pretty please? Its how I was introduced to MOI, through the then-Alibre Design, and it would make things so much easier. I like doing basic shapes and organic shapes in MOI, and then exporting them to Geomagic for detailing and fine tuning. Going through a third file format in order to import/export files between the two isn't always ideal.

Thanks for listening!

There are prior posts on copy and paste from MoI to Alibre.

- Brian

Hi Robert,

> Sorry I wasn't more clear, I meant having the datum displayed on the screen with the lines
> and circles. Its like a HUD on a fighter jet - you want to keep your eyes on one thing, not
> going back and forth.

The problem is that those types of displays can easily turn from "Heads up" to more like "Greatly obscuring the actual model you're trying to see"...

It's a general point of emphasis with MoI's overall design to try and avoid popping things up in your face that might get in the way of you seeing your actual design, so having numeric inputs and readouts more often off to the side helps fit in with that more.


> Geomagic interoperability would be outstanding, pretty please?

Well, there is already interoperability using STEP (or IGES or SAT) file formats.

Could you maybe be more specific about what particular thing you'd be gaining by avoiding that route?

It tends to be difficult in general to support private application formats that are unique to just one specific application. MoI is used with a whole bunch of different programs, not just Alibre and it makes things easier for me to focus on a core set of neutral and widely supported file formats rather than separate ones for every different program.

So I'm sorry it's probably not very likely in the foreseeable future. Maybe at some point in the future I'll have an SDK set up for MoI where other programmers will be able to extend it with their own additional code, maybe then Alibre would be able to make use of that to implement what you're asking for here themselves. It will probably be a while yet before I will be able to focus on opening up an SDK for MoI though, it requires a lot of effort to support other developers.

- Michael

Thanks for the background. That explains a lot, and I do appreciate it.

In terms of interoperability, I'd like to see more import/export options available in MOI. This is more of a Geomagic issue (the newer release is buggy as heck and has trouble opening even simple STL files). I'm not completely sure which other import/export options I'd like to see, but I know I'd like to see some more. I was recently trying to help a friend open some autocad and Lightwave files, and we went in between about ten different platforms, all of which claimed that they could open at least the autocad files, but nope, they couldn't. The more options that are available, the easier it is to transfer files, etc., and I could see myself using MOI more than I currently do. That's probably not a great answer, but that's what I could come up with.

Thanks for listening.

Bob

Hi Bob,

re:
> I was recently trying to help a friend open some autocad and Lightwave files, and we went
> in between about ten different platforms, all of which claimed that they could open at least
> the autocad files, but nope, they couldn't.

The thing that's kind of tricky about AutoCAD files is that there are a lot of different kinds of data that can be contained inside of them, everything from 2D drafting entities like lines, arcs, and dimensions, all the way to polygon mesh objects. There is kind of a jumble of a lot of different possible things that they can store.

Some programs only read certain categories of objects, like a 2D drafting program will maybe only look for drafting objects and skip the other kinds of objects.

That's possibly what you were running into there.


> The more options that are available, the easier it is to transfer files, etc., and I could see
> myself using MOI more than I currently do. That's probably not a great answer, but that's
> what I could come up with.

I can appreciate that "more is better" with regard to file formats... But unfortunately it takes a lot of concentrated effort to do a good job at supporting any one particular file format, there is usually a lot of work involved. So it is good to be more specific about which formats in particular would help the most.

- Michael

Added to the wishlist:

• A 'quick mesh preview' — option to press a keyboard key to preview the polygon structure of the current scene, based on your preferred mesh export settings. I would find this very useful for determining the best orientation, rotation and/or location of objects, especially when they need to be combined using Boolean. Even better would be a (simplified) real-time mesh structure overlay mode on your NURBS objects.

Hi Metin,

> • A 'quick mesh preview' — option to press a keyboard key to preview the polygon structure
> of the current scene, based on your preferred mesh export settings.

Set the following as the command part of a shortcut key:

SaveAs c:\test.obj


When it's given a parameter like that, the SaveAs command will use that as the file name rather than popping up a file name dialog, so you'll go directly to the mesh export after that shortcut key is triggered. When you're done looking at things push Escape to cancel out.

- Michael

Thanks Michael, that's a great tip!

I'll reduce the wish to only the realtime mesh preview mode, which I can imagine is a future function, when PC's have gotten a bit faster.