Hi,

First post here, I am really impressed with the application and it looks very promising. I heard about it in the Xara discussion board.

I find the export path to illustrator to be a very interesting feature. I do commercial illustration and often start with wireframe output (like "hide lines" in autocad") which I process with vector and bitmap tools.

It would be great if 3d views could be outputted in this fashion, being exactly like the display view render and maybe with a 'hidden line' options.

Keep on the excellent work!

Regards,

Marc

Hi Marc, thanks, I'm glad that you like MoI!

I definitely have plans on improving the AI export and adding the ability to do hidden line type exports, it is just something that I did not have time to add to the 1.0 version.

One idea I've thought of is to have a "Print" view tab alongside the regular Split / 3D / Top / Front / Right ones. Pushing this tab would switch the workspace to a printed page view, and there would be some options to populate the page with hidden line snapshots from different views. Then if you saved to AI while that view was active, it would save those vectors that would normally be used for printing.

But that is not completely designed yet, and it will take quite a bit of work to do that well. I'm not really sure yet when I will get a chance to work on that, it may be a while.

I am generally interested in adding more illustration type features over time though.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Glad too see you have plans on this. I think the only 3d application that generates vectors images is Swift3d and Sketchup pro.

As a workaround, in Autocad I used to print a viewport with a pdf printer, hiding lines.
It produced a flattened vector image, although the generated curves in the pdf were segmented.

Marc

Hi Marc, you might be interested in trying out Rhino for that as well (http://rhino3d.com/) , it has a command named "Make2D", which will generate a hidden-line 2D curve vector image of a 3D solid model.

You actually should be able to bring .3dm files you create in MoI directly into Rhino for that type of processing.

That might be another useful tool for you in this kind of processing.

- Michael

Thanks for the tip!

Marc

Pfeeewww! There's a lot of stuff in Rhino!

The make2d produces nice bezier curves, it could be a good tool in that sense. One thing thought is that they are generated on another plane, not directly as an export and they are also slightly different of what's displayed in the viewport.

One thing I noticed in rhino is that blended (Blendsrf) objects do not update when individual elements are moved, like they do in moi.


In comparison I really dig the simple UI and display of Moi

Regards,

Marc

> One thing I noticed in rhino is that blended (Blendsrf) objects do not
> update when individual elements are moved, like they do in moi.

I think you can set it up to do this, you have to click in the status bar on "History" to record it for the next command that you execute.

In MoI this is a bit easier since history is always recorded for everything and updating is turned on by default for several commands like Blend for example.


> In comparison I really dig the simple UI and display of Moi

Thanks!

Actually MoI and Rhino can work really well together since data transfer is very seamless between them. You can even use copy and paste between them.

As you mentioned, Rhino has a whole lot of stuff in it, sometimes that can certainly be useful too. But yeah a lot of stuff tends to bring a complex UI along with it.

MoI has more of a focus on making simple things work smoothly and quickly.

- Michael

Hi Marc,


>>One thing I noticed in rhino is that blended (Blendsrf) objects do not update when individual elements are moved, like they do in moi.


You can set up a default history options by _History command in Rhino; for example "_History _Record=Yes _Enter" causes Rhino will work in the same manner like MoI...

Petr

Just a word to let you know I have found a workaround for outputting 3dviews of Moi models to 2d lines;
Alibre Express reads native 3dm files.

Making a sheet view and inserting previously saved view of the part works for that purpose.
It outputs dwg files and It's free.

It can also help dimensioning objects (until such a feature comes in MOI).
I did not explore Alibre very much but it seems like a good solution for know.


Out of curiosity, is there any renderer that works directly with nurbs objects?

Marc



Thanks for the tip Petr!