Hi Len, it's something that I'm looking into at the start of v4 here, it's still too early to tell for sure whether it will happen or not. There is a lot of work involved.

- Michael

It's a shame there's so much work involved. I do hope it will happen somehow. Thanks.

It's a shame indeed that there's so much work needed to convert it.

I'm hitting memory limitation errors on a daily basis at the moment. As much and I *love* MOI, it genuinely concerns me that it's got a limited lifetime now for me. I'm seeing more and more complex data being dropped on me and it doesn't seem to be slowing down. Solidworks engineers seem to live for generating gargantuan STEP files and I can't see them getting any lighter.

Having said that, I may be special case.
I know MOI's primary intent is creation, not conversion, but even then I find complex array stuff (I'm talking mass bolt threads and patterned cooling plates etc) can kill MOI rapidly while there's no instancing available).



This is absolutely not a bitch or whine, I promise.. just an attempt to lend a few words of support ( in case you're trying to justify the work involved. )
I personally want to see MOI futureproofed as I'm enjoying investing more and more time in it.

Hi Rico - fundamentally the main idea behind MoI is to try and make it quick and easy to create simple models... These things that you are doing, working with gargantuan solidworks models, and mass replication of thread bolts and patterned cooling plates are not really very much in line with that, so I'm not surprised that you're running into problems. For those particular projects MoI is probably just not currently the right tool for those jobs, you need something that supports 64-bit and instancing.

MoI will get those functions eventually but if those are very high priorities for you and you need them right now you should be using something other than MoI, MoI is just not yet a match with what you are specifically trying to use it for.

I am doing some research in these areas currently though, and I hope to make progress. But it is too early to know for sure when they will be done or any kind of timetable though. Sometimes things that requires a lot of work like these functions can be tricky to implement well and can take a lot of work.

- Michael

Hi Rico,

Just curious about this statement > (I'm talking mass bolt threads and patterned cooling plates etc)
Being an Engineer myself and working with parts with a lot of arrays and threaded holes we never detail the bolt threads for that exact reason, we know it makes the file unnecessarily heavy, the detailed 2d drawings should show the thread specifications.
I'd be inclined to talk to the Engineers about this.

Cheers

Oh Michael, please don't take any of what I wrote as a slight!

I'm a super enthusiastic evangelist for MOI wherever I get an ear that hasn't heard it already. I do also use it extensively for modelling the "simpler" stuff (deceptive terminology there as it's FAR more preferable than any parametric modeler I've ever come across, even for very intricate work).

As to conversion stuff: my workflow when I get the enormous data sets in is generally to explode them as much as necessary in Rhino and then bring them into MOI as parts (working individually, save and load the next part etc). I do a lot of Previs and marketing stuff though, so ultimately it ends up in Maya, which is where the other side of MOI comes in. As I've mentioned before there's NOTHING on the market comparable to MOI's poly conversion algorithms. Rhino's mesh output is laughably bad, MOI's is perfect. I can't overstate that. MOI's poly output is PERFECT.

Danny - thank you for the words there, much appreciated. Unfortunately it's ME putting in the threads etc where nescessary ;)
The engineers just leave annotations for that kind of thing because even they're not that mad ;). Again, MOI enables me to put that stuff in with ease, though of course in isolation. The close-up zooms of a lot of the stuff I do needs to be accurate for the photo-real side of things.

Again, I have no complaints about MOI. I honestly don't know if I'd take on some of the jobs I do without it.
I was just trying to bolster the enthusiasm for a 64bit version ( if it was genuinely being considered.)

:) /Rico

I know MoI is not intended as a conversion tool but it's SO good at it :)

I don't know if it would be possible to update just the polygon output module to 64bit as I don't think the rest really needs it as much. I use MoI to convert Inventor files (as well as model of course) and it runs out of RAM even on what would be considered relatively simple stuff by today's standards. No repeated patterns, instances, threads, or other fine detail stuff that would make it unnecessarily heavy. Just the basic critical structure, so there isn't an easy way of reducing the model size other than breaking it into more and more parts which is tedious.

MoI is such a useful tool in this regard I continue to use it even with the memory limitations.

Best of luck finding a solution that is practical. Cheers! - Len

My modest opinion, things such instancing would be more important than the 64bit version for now.
M.

Hi Rico,

> Oh Michael, please don't take any of what I wrote as a slight!

Don't worry, I didn't take it as a slight, I just wanted to explain that MoI is not particularly targeted at those kinds of mega-data uses that you are having difficulties with... So it sort of naturally follows that if MoI is not currently suitable for those particular things, you'd be better off for those tasks in some other program that does have more focus on those areas.


> I was just trying to bolster the enthusiasm for a 64bit version ( if it was
> genuinely being considered.)

It's definitely being considered and actively researched. It's just too early to tell whether it will happen for sure or not.

- Michael

Hi Len,

> I don't know if it would be possible to update just the polygon output module to 64bit as
> I don't think the rest really needs it as much.

Unfortunately it's not really possible to mix 32-bit and 64-bit code together within one single executable process... It is possible to do things like have separate .exe processes running, each of which are 32-bit and 64-bit and send data back and forth between them, but it would also be a lot of work to set things up in that way.

It's likely to be better to just try and convert everything over to 64-bit.

- Michael

Hi Max,

> My modest opinion, things such instancing would be more important
> than the 64bit version for now.

I think that's probably true that having instancing would often times be of greater value for complex models than 64-bit-ness.

However, the way it works out for practical development is the 64-bit conversion involves the most work and upheaval in the code base and it tends to be best to do those kinds of major structural changes right at the beginning of a new version cycle.

- Michael

Just like to put my penny worth in :-)

I use moi a lot in conjunction with Modo. I create both photo realistic renderings and 2D technical illustrations. Although we talk of mega data sets, it seems to me that large files i.e. > 250mb are becoming more commonplace in my workplace. I usually find my jobs are working with complex models, no one ever came to me wanting an exploded illustration of something simple, that usually gets done by the screenshot hackers in tech docs:-).

I use the export to Ai format where possible but it struggles on even quite simple models, the competitor is Pro E Ardor text CADprocess, this is a more mature software but even this is 32bit and is showing its age, I have to split some of my models (using MOI) before exporting. Caprices costs approx 10K!

My point is that I think Micheal underestimates some of MOIs non core features, Polygon export and ai export to name a couple. These are huge Plus points for MOI which just make this program so much more amazing.

Still keeping fingers crossed for 64bit - Im happy in the knowledge that we have the best man on the job:-)

matt

I vote for 48bits

The Mac version used a lot of energy in V3, maybe concentrating on new features for this version and 64bit on V5 would be a good idea?

Marc

Hi Marc,

> The Mac version used a lot of energy in V3, maybe concentrating on
> new features for this version and 64bit on V5 would be a good idea?

It's sort of tempting to do that, but the larger and more complex the code base gets it then gets more difficult to do a large overall switch, so going that route just kind of makes the 64-bit transition all the more difficult later on...

- Michael

Well, I think there simply is no way around going 64 bit for a 3D software these days, so the sooner the better as far as I'm concerned.
Some other 3D software doesn't even come in 32 Bit anymore...

I'm usually not doing supercomplex models but need the data rather finely subdivided for closeups, and even that is getting problematic in some cases with MoI.

So I personally would vote for 64 Bit first, everything else later ;-)

But that's just me.

Cheers,

Tom

You have a very cool refresh site!

why not just prioritize the exporter to be 64bit? That is the bottle neck for RAM anyways. Nurbs format is fairly light weight anyways.

Hi 2byts,

> why not just prioritize the exporter to be 64bit? That is the bottle neck for RAM
> anyways. Nurbs format is fairly light weight anyways.

Some previous discussion on that earlier in the thread here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7284.11

- Michael

Thanks Pilou ;-)

Cheers,

Tom