Need to learn solid modeling for a 3d printing work.

Learning MoI can be easier but I'm losing too much respect Rhino?

Hi davide - most likely MoI would be the best place for you to start.

That's true that there are more tools in Rhino but many of them are for pretty specialized uses so it's not too likely that you would really be missing them.

Meanwhile the huge number of tools causes Rhino's UI to be very dense with "stuff" and tends to make it overall more difficult to get started with.

- Michael

I'm a Maya user, doing both game lowpolymodeling and commercials highpoly. Several years time to time I tried to get into nurbs. Maya have some, but for me very hard to manage. Got my hands on Alias, Rhino - both are very powerful, but I felt lost, I need only minimum functions from them. MoI is a big difference - I could do something few minutes after I started it first. So now combining MoI and Fusion 360 (for some fillet operations etc) and I like this combination. When I have problems or I need a real parameters, I go to Fusion, but for modeling speed I'm in Moi.

Vojtěch

Hi

I own both

I moved from Rhino to Moi last week,
Please understand Rhino is superb, but in my experience
you can get swamped with options you will never use, also the exporting from Rhino to other
software can be poor (horrible triangles), whereas Moi is fab (lovely ngons & quads)

This comment from a review of Rhino and Moi i found
on the internet could possibly sum it up.......

"MoI is just totally focused on the user experience whereas
Rhino is focused on how long the spec sheet can get"

I don't necessarily fully agree with that criticism of Rhino
but I do understand why he said it.

Philip Moyles

Thanks all for your answers.

Especially interested to learn solid modeling and editing for 3d printing purpose.

How good is moi on that (i.e create watertight models) and exchanging models with Solidworks or Rhino?

Also what about training / education options?

Hi davide,

> How good is moi on that (i.e create watertight models) and exchanging
> models with Solidworks or Rhino?

MoI works well for building watertight solids, and also for exchanging models with SolidWorks and also Rhino.

In fact MoI's main file format is the same 3DM format as Rhino, so you can just open up 3DM files you save in MoI with Rhino. You can also use Ctrl+C/Ctrl+V copy and paste to move objects back and forth between MoI and Rhino as well, so they work well in combination with each other.

For transferring to SolidWorks, SolidWorks also has a 3DM file import or you can use STEP files as another way for moving data from MoI into SolidWorks.

You can test this with the MoI trial version.


> Also what about training / education options?

Rhino has more for this - the main resources for MoI education are to read the help file here: http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_help.htm - read the introduction section to get a general overview, and watch the tutorial videos: http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/tutorials.htm

Rhino has more training materials for it - you can actually do many Rhino tutorials in MoI as well, especially ones that focus on basic NURBS modeling strategies like how to set up sweeps, doing boolean operations etc...

There is a fair amount of similarity between Rhino and MoI because I created both of them. But the focus for MoI is much more about making a streamlined and easier to learn type of CAD software. The focus in Rhino is more about being comfortable to AutoCAD users and providing a lot of different tools.

The best way to see if Rhino or MoI would work well for you is to get the trial versions of both and spend a little time messing around with them.

- Michael

Thanks Michael!

Of course I did try both MoI and Rhino, did like MoI more, even if being a newbie is hard to have a deep test.

What if we didn't actually design a part but we need to check and modify an external design made by Autocad? In MoI did we have all is needed to import, check and modify complex external Autocad design?

Hi davide,

> What if we didn't actually design a part but we need to check and modify an external design made
> by Autocad? In MoI did we have all is needed to import, check and modify complex external
> Autocad design?

Rhino has more tools for doing that type of stuff. But it depends on the specifics of exactly what you want to check and what specific modifications you want to make.

The focus in MoI is much more on drawing your own stuff instead of analyzing already existing parts, although they can be loaded into MoI.

It also depends on the details of how the AutoCAD design was created specifically - like is it a 2D blueprint drawing? Polygon mesh objects? Solids? There are many different possible ways to create stuff in AutoCAD and Rhino supports more kinds of AutoCAD entities than MoI does.

- Michael

Can't find in the documentation what files format are allowed for import.

Hi Davide,

> Can't find in the documentation what files format are allowed for import.

The formats supported for opening are listed under the command reference File > Open section, here:
http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_command_reference1.htm#open

Export formats are listed in the command reference File > Save As section, here:
http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_command_reference1.htm#saveas

There is also some information about exporting in the Introduction section of the help file here:
http://moi3d.com/3.0/docs/moi_introduction.htm#export

Hope this helps!

- Michael

Also Max Smirnov ImportObj script:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7320.1

Just trying to import this STL file into MoI, tried to convert it into DXF, 3DM, STEP format using C4D and Rhino5 trial without success, MoI didn't load anything.

Just to know what I'm doing wrong.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxbefK5ByPzyNkc1R3ZQcEhHR00/view?usp=sharing

.STL is a polygon format

MoI can't import polygon data.
There is not specific polygon modeling tool in MoI either.

From the command reference :

MoI supports reading in curve and surface data from 3DM, IGES, STEP, and SAT files. 2D curves can be opened from PDF and AI files, and curves and drafting entities like lines, circles, and arcs can be opened from DXF files.

(rhino can store polygon in .3dm, but this data will be ignored in MoI)

Any way to convert a polygonal model into one recognized by MoI?

Qui c'è tutto ;)

http://moi3d.com/forum/messages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6674.1


M

Hi davide,

re:
> Just trying to import this STL file into MoI, tried to convert it into DXF, 3DM, STEP format
> using C4D and Rhino5 trial without success, MoI didn't load anything.
>
> Just to know what I'm doing wrong.

As others wrote above, the problem is that STL is a polygon mesh format - that means the model data in the file is made up of a whole bunch of little flat triangle facet pieces. That is a very different kind of model data than the curves and spline surfaces that MoI works with at modeling time.

It is possible to convert from smooth spline surfaces into triangles by dicing up the large surfaces into little facets which is what MoI will do when you export to STL format. But it is not very easy to try and do the reverse and try to form large smooth surface patches out of already diced up little flat pieces. So that's why there isn't any regular way to import STL facet data into Moi - MoI is not designed to work with that type of data at modeling time, it only deals with that type of data for export.

It is possible in some cases to convert polygon mesh data into spline surfaces, like with Rhino's MeshToNurb command but I would not recommend it for general purpose use because CAD programs like MoI are not really designed to work with models made up of a huge number of little flat pieces that only approximate a curved surface, CAD programs are designed to work with larger actual smooth surfaces.

What is it that you are trying to do with the STL file that you wanted to load into MoI? You will probably need to use a polygon mesh editing program to work on it, not MoI.

Hope this helps explain things - different file formats can represent 3D models in very different ways and programs tend to be focused on working with one particular style of data. STL data is a triangle mesh type of data and so for loading it in usually you need a polygon mesh editing program for that.

- Michael

Thanks all.
It's really clear to me the difference among polygonal and solid modeling in the theory, but never worked on solid modeling sw.
Understood probably the best choice is to have both, need to further evaluate if MoI good as is for modelling is really what we need.

Returning to this topic, we will order tomorrow our first 3d scanner (DAVID SLS3), we received just Saturday our first 3d printer (a new FDM advanced model not yet on the market).

We want start using both together, understood is not immediate but possible using some external programs to import the scan point cloud into MOI, wanted to know how adapt is MOI to model following the resulting mesh as guide.

Growshapes.com states output as obj, stl, or ply, and a hefty price.
What will the file sizes be?
Brian