Hi, Michael.
The screenshots show how the CAM program handles vectors from PDF and DXF files.
Vladimir.

Hi Vladimir, sorry I didn't know it was the direction of the arcs and circles in the DXF that you were referring to about the bug. I've seen some programs miscalculate the actual geometry for arcs in cases where they have a plane normal pointing downwards in Z, I thought that might be what you were seeing.

It does look like MoI is not preserving the arc direction for its DXF output, I'll see about tuning that up.

Thanks for reporting the bug!

- Michael

Hi Michael
I am looking forward to the next version to be able to add "Match", "rebuildcrf" and "umwrapcrf" similar to "Rhino" software. These are useful for surface modeling. Thank you!
-Yuan

Hi Yuan, I would like to add those functions at some point in the future but I'm sorry it is not likely to be for the next version. For now you should plan to still use Rhino for those kinds of surface modeling functions.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I work solely on a laptop and I would imagine that, in this, I am part of a vast and fast growing constituency. Moi3d's pared back UI is more suited than most CAD softs when working with such limited scene real estate; however it would be IMHO great if it was possible to collapse the side bar menu in and out of the scene edge.

The cross & 3 line symbols have become web standards for this and so would be immediately legible to new users.

Also it would be useful to be able to switch between tools menu and scene browser.

I am excited by prospect of the upcoming V4. If you can see some benefit in these suggestions, I wonder if they may be included....at least as an option.

Thanks for all your great work
James

Hi James, one thing that's related to that which you can do now is the option under Options > General > Side pane position: "Inside".

That will remove the Scene Browser as a separate panel and instead make it show up as a palette at the bottom of the other tools.

Also another thing you can use currently is to set up a keyboard shortcut that will toggle the side pane visibility. To do that set up a shortcut key under Options > Shortcut keys with this as the command part:

script: /* Toggle Side pane visibility */ var style = moi.ui.sidepane.document.body.style; style.display = (style.display ? '' : 'none' );


- Michael

Hi Michael,

>> you can do now is the option under Options > General > Side pane position: "Inside". <<

Yes, this is the option I currently use and generally it works well for me. I just feel if I could simply switch between palettes, scrolling the side bar would usually be unnecessary (excepting projects with many named objects etc).

.>> you can.....set up a keyboard shortcut that will toggle the side pane visibility. <<

Thank you, this a great tip. I will do this immediately. I might see if I can link it to a custom icon

Thanks again
James

Hi James, here's another script you can try. This one expects the browser pane to be in either "adjacent" or "opposite" mode (not "inside" mode) and it will go in 3 steps, showing side pane only, then browser pane only, then hiding both:

script: /* Toggle Side pane and Browser pane visibility 3 steps*/ var sp = moi.ui.sidepane.document.body.style; var bp = moi.ui.getUIPanel( 'moi://ui/BrowserPane.htm' ).document.body.style; var spon = (sp.display != 'none'); var bpon = (bp.display != 'none'); if ( spon && !bpon ) { sp.display = 'none'; bp.display = ''; } else if ( !spon && bpon ) { sp.display = 'none'; bp.display = 'none'; } else { sp.display = ''; bp.display = 'none'; }

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Now you're talking.....Great stuff
This has become my go-to setup!

Thanks James

@Michael Gibson I hate to say it but I really don't like the idea of new version's preferences being saved undr Windows user profile folder alongside Obj Library addon files. I have just lost a handfull of data thanks to these new settings. When you have such a brilliant software with everything basically running from one folder by default why to go into another direction to support Windows way of thinking as Microsoft does everything wrong anyhow.

Appreciate it!

Hi agonyii, your comments are kind of confusing because there hasn't been any changes in the new version for where the moi.ini file is located by default, it's the same behavior as in all previous versions.

By default Windows (since Vista) will prevent programs from modifying files in the Program Files directory, so it won't work to store a preferences file there for most people. That's why the default location for moi.ini is in your user data folder instead of alongside MoI.exe .

You can change this if you want though, if you move the moi.ini file so that it is in the same folder as MoI.exe, MoI will find it and use that one. If it's inside the Program Files folder though it won't be able to save any changes unless you have run MoI with elevated privileges or if you have turned UAC off.

It's also possible to put moi.ini in whatever folder you want and then tell MoI where it is by passing in the path as a command line parameter to MoI.exe , make sure to put " " quote characters around the path if it has any spaces in it.

- Michael

I get it now! Please understand my frustration, apparently I did not know enough about it.

I have a question in terms of 'Obj library', would that 3d party addon still reside in the different folder even if my moi.ini is inside apps main folder? If that's not the case it would be awesome if 3d party addons folder would somehow be relevant to the placement of moi.ini file. Just trying to make my moi portable installation bulletproof from now on so nothing gets lost if I backup this one folder.

Really appreciate your help in any case!

Hi agonyii,

> I have a question in terms of 'Obj library', would that 3d party addon still reside
> in the different folder even if my moi.ini is inside apps main folder?

There is no automatic connection between where your moi.ini file is located and how the Obj library addon works. If I remember right the newest version of Max's CustomUI is designed to go in the app data folder so it won't need to be reinstalled on every new beta release. But older versions went into the main app program files folder so you might try using an older version. It's probably possible to edit it so it goes wherever you want.

But it's likely that in the future more and more stuff will go into the appdata folder like script downloads and stuff like that, both to support the default Windows configuration with UAC enabled where Program Files is read only and also so that added resources are stored in a central location so that it isn't necessary to copy things around for every new release.

I guess I should make it so you can customize the appdata folder location though. Then you could set that so everything is under one single folder.

- Michael

> I guess I should make it so you can customize the appdata folder location though. Then you could set that so everything is under one single folder.

That sounds awesome! I think that would be the best solution so far. Thanks for filtering that out!

Please allow me to add one more comment on the subject:

Alongside OBJ library, I also have customized UI. I prefer dark theme, it's easy on my eyes so while having something neutral I can fully concentrate just on design. I just hate the idea, I had to overwrite quite a lot of original MOI app files to have it this way. Would be possible, if we set a custom folder for all our preferences, scripts and adddons that this folder is also monitored from Moi for it's own app's modified files, icons? If Moi sees any of its own files there then these files would get loaded first - instead of ones from the apps folder. In that case way we would be able to keep the original files intact and still able to keep all the addons we use.
Right now with every new Moi update we have to reinstall everything and I all design colleges I know are utilizing Moi in a such way.

Thank you in any case!

Hi agonyii,

> If Moi sees any of its own files there then these files would get loaded first - instead of ones
> from the apps folder. In that case way we would be able to keep the original files intact and
> still able to keep all the addons we use.

I have some ideas along these lines for theme packages where a theme could override the default resources but there are some tricky areas for stuff other than images where stuff should be combined together for when new things are added to moi.css for example that the theme doens't implement.

It's something that I want to work on in the future but it probably won't happen in the V4 time frame though.

- Michael

Hi agonyii,

> > I guess I should make it so you can customize the appdata folder location though. Then you could set that so everything is under one single folder.
>
> That sounds awesome! I think that would be the best solution so far. Thanks for filtering that out!

I wasn't able to get to this for this very next beta coming out soon but it's still on my list.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Just a thought with working with bigger assemblies and more parts with upcoming V4 release would it be possible to somehow have a deep lock mode for layers or objects as when you hide and unhide it reveals all layers and would be good to keep reference layers or other transitional items in a buried state within the file.

regards
Alex.

Hi Alex, I think it would be difficult to express an additional hide state in the UI without it getting complicated.

You can avoid unhiding everythying currently if you use the scene browser to do your unhiding instead of the Edit > Hide command.

Also if you use Ctrl+click on Edit > Hide that will do a "show subset" operation where you can show just some of the hidden objects instead of all of them.

Maybe if you want something totally out of your way for an extended time you could export it out to a separate file and then delete it from your current one.

- Michael

Hello Michael!

How are you ? I hope fine :)

Inspired by the last post of James, I want to ask you something related to "2d workflows".

I don't know what you're currently working on, but I want to remind you a very important area that need to be improved: tools for curves.

Especially:

1) A new and improved "rebuild" command
2) New API methods that can give us at least the access to the inner structure of the curves (knot points, control points)
3) An improved "offset" command
4) The chance to easily pick one or more control points of a curve and easily change their "type": from "sharp" to "not sharp"

...other things that now I can't remember :)

As you can see I didn't specify details for the points from 1 to 3 but I know that you know what I'm talking about ;)

Thanks a lot and have a nice day!

Hi Marco, #1 and #3 are pretty difficult areas to implement well, I'd need more information about how you'd expect an improved version of those to behave.

#4 is something I've been meaning to do for some time, I'll see if I could address that in v4.

- Michael