Hi Michael, any very rough timeline on the next beta release? I hate to be that guy, but I would love to have something exciting to look forward to :)

Hi nameless, re: next beta release - well I'm heading out on vacation for a week. Maybe something like 3 weeks from now?

I've been making progress on basic dimension annotations but it still needs some more work.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I wish you fun and relaxation in your vacation! And looking forward to it :)

Out of curiousity, I've been checking the contents of a few folders. :-)

In the MoI4.0_Beta_Feb-26-2019, commands folder, I have 267 "stock" command related files, (<50% .htm, and> 50% .js).

In the %AppData" / Moi/Commands folder, I have 1089 files. There are 266 "stock" command related files (more or less duplicates of the MoI4.0_Beta commands folder (-1)).
(I thought that the "stock" commands were supposed to be in the beta/commands folder, but at present they are in both locations.)

There are 823 additional "add-on" files, with _underline prefix, (<50% .htm), including quite a few experimental commands, and "mod" versions.

So one question is, in which directory do the "stock" MoI commands belong? Did the last update put the "stock" commands in the %AppData% Commands subdirectory?

- Brian

Hi Brian, MoI shouldn't have put any commands at all in the appdata commands folder, all those would have gotten there from you copying them in there.

It's intended that the stock commands are not in appdata, they are intended to be in the old install directory commands folder. That's so that if any of them are updated with some new features you will get them along with the new install.

When you run a command and the same command is present in both the install commands dir and the appdata commands dir, the install one will take precedence.

So it doesn't do any actual harm to have them additionally in the appdata dir though.

Hope that's what you were asking about!

- Michael

Feature Request - I've been using MOI for 3d printing and it is awesome and does great exports to STL files. Would it be possible for MOI to be able to import STL files so that we could support the entire life-cycle of 3d printing?

Imagine being able to download ANY file off of Thingverse and modify it and print it....it would be a great boost for my workflow. I can really see MOI being able to excel in that niche.

I understand if it's not possible but I love MOI and figured it wouldn't hurt to ask. :-)

Best, Nicholas

Hi Nicholas,
I'll go along with your wish. There are a large number of models at Thingivers that can be used with minor changes. Unfortunately not every 3D program can process the STL files.
I myself have published a lot of STL files of models (of course constructed with MoI ;-)) there.
Greetings
-moritz

Hi Nicholas & moritz, sorry but importing STL files is not likely to be added to MoI anytime soon. The reason is that STL files only contain triangle mesh data, not CAD surfaces are solids like MoI is designed to work with at modeling time.

STL is not really designed to be a format for translating model data between CAD programs, it's meant to be used for transfer to a 3D printer only.

- Michael

Hi Michael, what a pity - thanks for the answer anyway.
-moritz

Thanks, Michaeel. I thought it might be a long shot. :-) The workflow I've found (but yet to test) is to take the STL into FreeCAD, convert it to a Step file, and then import that. I was just hoping to skip that middle process. Thanks a lot for your quick answer! Best, Nick

Hi Nick, the thing is that with that kind of transfer something like a sphere is going to come over as a whole bunch of little flat facets rather than a real sphere surface.

For many things that's just not going to be a very good result. But if that's what you want to do you might try the STL import plug-in from here:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7046.6

or here:

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=8860.1

- Michael

Hi Michael,

All the FEA programs I have used will only let you export the deformed geometry as a stl file. I import it into CAD to manually rebuild the CAD geometry. Unfortunately, FEA programs don't export the deformed geometry as a step file. That would save me a ton of work. But it would be nice to have as an option to import stl files. I just use them as a reference. So I don't need to do any actual CAD work with it. Just thought I'd add my two sense. For me, it would be useful to have.

Anthony

Agreed about it being a pity - I'd always assumed STL files were quite similar to OBJ files.
I suppose the way around this would be to find a file translator to go from STL to OBJ and bring it in that way.

Loving MoI V4.


Cheers, Martin.

Hi Martin, pretty much the only similarity between STL file and OBJ files are that they are both polygon file formats.

STL files are very bare bones and were only designed for sending data to a 3D printer, not as a way to store models for working on.

STL files are intended to contain only one solid in them, they don't have any material information, can only contain triangles, and don't even have a structure with an indexed shared vertex list. They are just a big list of triangles without any connectivity information.

They should not be used as your main file format for any kind of work in progress, you should only generate them as needed for 3D printing processing.


> I suppose the way around this would be to find a file translator to go from
> STL to OBJ and bring it in that way.

It isn't really just a problem of translation between file formats - STL files contain only triangle mesh data and MoI is not designed to work on triangle mesh data. Just translating the same not-applicable-to-MoI data between different formats will not really be a solution.

If you need to work on an object that is defined using triangle mesh data, you would want to use a polygon mesh editing program that is designed to work with that kind of data which MoI is not.

- Michael

Thanks for your detailed reply, Michael.
I really did believe STL & OBJ files were more similar than you have explained - I'll try not to make such assumptions in the future.


Martin.

Ok, I'm using the newest v4 beta and it looks quite fine, but Michael, are there still no improvements to the rendering of edges? Edges from shallow or thins parts still "shine through", which can be very irritating. Actually, this one of the downsides of MoI that bugs me for years now. :-(

Hi 3image, sorry no, no improvements yet for the "bleed through" display artifacts. It's a sensitive area and it would be easy to get the opposite problem of edges partially not displayed.

There is some more information here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=4987.2

- Michael

Hi,
did anyone try to edit a STL by importing it to Blender > Export as OBJ > open that OBJ in SubD in MoI v4?

I do try, but on quite complex model (many triangles - but STL have only 7MB).
MoI open that for a loooooong time 2H+ and sometimes crashes near end.

Or any proven method/workaround for editing downloaded STL file???

Thanks

Hi Mr. Yuri, STL files contain only triangles. The MoI v4 SubD importer is only designed to import sub-d control cages from OBJ files, not dense non-subd structured triangle meshes.

So that's why the import is not working, it's not the right kind of data that the importer is meant to handle.

In general MoI is not designed to edit dense polygon mesh geometry, you would need to use a polygon editing program to do that kind of work not MoI.

- Michael

Hi Michael,
I already understand that MoI is not made to edit triangle meshes.
I thought that STL can be converted to SubD-friendly file that can be opened in MoI.
So the complex triangle mesh will be translated to something else that MoI can handle.