For me persoanlly I'm interested to see how the V4 handles large models (250mb +) .. also exporting to PDF or ai is always running out of memory.

Fingers crossed it won't be long before i can give v4 a good workout :-)

Matt

Feature Requests:
In case these haven't been mentioned before...

1) Layer panel grouping-- extremely helpful for large assemblies with a lot of parts.

2) Sizing or scrolling of the layer panel to be able to see long names on imported assemblies.

Many engineers name things like targeting multi-level objects in coding. i.e productName.areaOfProduct.feature1.areqOfFeature1.blah1.blah1a.blah1a1.finallyAUniqueName. Currently the layer panel looks like a long list of identical names, as only the left "common" part shows.


Also , 64bit. I know you have mentioned this would be a lot of work, but I wanted to put in another plug for it, as currently complicated solids frequently bump into memory limits when exporting.

Hi fred, 64bit has been a lot of work but I have been working on it for quite a while now and it's almost ready. So the first v4 beta will have the 64-bit part.

I also want to improve the handling of long names in the scene browser like you're asking about. That won't be ready for the first v4 beta but I want to work on that during the beta test period. In the meantime it is possible to adjust the width of the scene browser panel to be wider by editing one of the text files that has the UI setup in it, please see here for some details on that: http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=5319.2 . The instructions there for where the file is located are for Mac, for Windows look under the ui folder inside MoI's main installation folder.

- Michael

I'm sorry, Michael, MoI V4 is taking too long. We have no other choice but to switch to… switch to…… uh……….. I give up. There's no alternative. We'll wait. ;)

Hi Metin, :) I hope it will be worth the wait! The first release will probably be a little underwhelming since it's mainly foundational stuff that is improved. But it will be good to be 64-bit and to have a more stable Mac version. I am looking forward to work on new features instead of rewriting.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

;) I totally understand. I'm really looking forward to work with the native MoI for Mac, and of course to the subsequent feature additions.

Thanks, and have a nice weekend everyone,

For the MoI help button, would it be helpful to have a customizable section,
in order to provide some help with add-on scripts?
Versus using an alert window...

And a way to quickly locate the relevant help, say for some script?

- Brian

Hi Brian,

re:
> And a way to quickly locate the relevant help, say for some script?

The way it works currently is that if you're in a command when you push the Help button, it will launch the help file reference help file going to the location for that command. So for example if you run the Line command and push Help before you exit the command, the help file should open up to the Line command.

If there is not any command currently running when you push Help, it opens to the table of contents page of the help file.

The part that's difficult about help for new scripts is that help file is currently set up as a static HTML page.

- Michael

Hello guys, MoI newbie right here! :)

A while ago I started testing the demo version out for a while and already love the workflow that MoI offers.
I would like to purchase it - I just have one question: since it looks like version 4 is around the corner,
is an update to version 4 also included if I'd buy V3 right now?

Thanks!

Hi TheFlow, I'm glad that you're liking MoI!

It's actually the first beta release of v4 that is right around the corner, that will start the beta testing period which could last anywhere from 6-12 months and the final v4 release won't happen until after that.

So the final v4 release is still a ways off and if you purchased v3 right now it's not likely that v4 would be automatically included, that will only happen if you purchased it within a couple of months or so of the final release.

- Michael

Hi Michael! Thank you for your quick answer. I can live with that, just wanted to clarify it a little. So let's go! :)

A minor wish:-)
Script numeric entry keypad restricted to non-negative numbers.

A minor question:
Is there a method to restrict keyboard entry of numbers to be greater than the previous entry of a different parameter value.
Example, Dupin Cyclide had a cRadius which can be any positive value. The aRadius has a positive value which must be greater than the cRadius.
I could replace the aRadius entry with delta_aRadius = aRadius - cRadius.

- Brian

Hi Brian,

re:
> Script numeric entry keypad restricted to non-negative numbers.

For integer inputs that can be done currently using a <moi:UnsignedIntegerInput> control.


> Is there a method to restrict keyboard entry of numbers to be greater than the
> previous entry of a different parameter value.

There isn't anything already bundled up for that, but I'd think your script could enforce that itself. When you get an event that the field has changed you could see if the value is out of the needed bounds and change the value in the control.

- Michael

Michael, a 64-bit build and Mac native build would be massive, instant upgrade right there for me since I mostly work on Mac! Also, pretty please, can you have a look at HiDPI support on for the Mac build?

I write numerically intensive analog modelling software and didn't expect much gain between 32-bit and 64-bit builds because I don't use much RAM, but it was a big speedup due to faster SSE operations which I didn't expect, so hopefully it will make an even bigger difference to MOI since memory access will hopefully also be helped. I think the main SSE speedup was because you have twice as many registers (16 total instead of 8) to work with for the 64-bit build, so more twice as many things can be stored in the fastest computational memory possible.

Hi Andrew, yes I've been paying attention to HiDPI for the v4 Mac build and I'm expecting to support it properly with v4. I haven't tested it on an actual Retina machine yet but I have tested it using the Quartz Debug HiDPI mode and have got everything tuned up there so far.

The expanded SSE registers do seem to be helping, I did a quick test just now of a big fillet operation and in MoI v3 32-bit it took 30 seconds and in v4 64-bit it took 22 seconds (this was the Windows build). So that seems to be going in the right direction. I've heard that in some cases the switch to 64-bit can actually hurt performance since some data doubles in size and then doesn't fit in some memory access cache level where it used to fit. But I don't seem to be running into that so far.

Just being able to address more memory will be a big improvement for MoI though, it's pretty easy to run out right now when exporting out to mesh formats.

For the Mac version there are a whole lot of little weird things that should be tuned up with v4, like text is drawn using Core Text now rather than FreeType so it looks like other system text, you can resize windows from any edge, should look nice on Retina now, zoom to full screen mode works, shouldn't have to mess with "Displays have separate Spaces" for multi monitor to work, doesn't modify the Info.plist anymore so running from the Downloads folder won't fail because of Gatekeeper Path Randomization making the bundle read only, .... I'm sure I'm missing some more. But the single biggest thing that I'm hoping will happen is that MoI shouldn't be as susceptible to getting broken on new OS releases. Wineskin/XQuartz have been pretty fragile in that area.

So not too much longer before you'll be able to test this all out!

- Michael

Sounds great Michael!

A question: will all MoI V3 scripts remain compatible with MoI V4? I rely heavily on a few scripts, such as Max's ImportObj and Subdiv.

Thanks,

Hi Metin, yes that is the goal that existing scripts should also work the same with MoI v4.

But there have been enough changes in the back end stuff that it's possible a couple may not work at first without adjusting a couple of things, either in a couple of lines in the script or in MoI. But I think that shouldn't be common.

- Michael

It's comforting to know that current MoI commands / scripts will be compatible with MoI V4, or need just minor tweaks to work again, thanks Michael, and good luck with the last straws before the beta premiere.

I would like to have a possibility to make simulatons like in Inventor for example. To you plan something like this in V4.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQA8f_l421Q

Hi Rudl, sorry no that's not in the plans for V4. I'm not really sure that MoI will ever have something like that built in, it's a pretty large area of work.

If you need to do that I would definitely recommend looking for some other software that could do that function for you now that you could import your MoI models into. You shouldn't wait to get it in MoI.

- Michael