Hi mantaskava,

> 1. So I was hearing (and waiting at the same time) for this Dimensions feature for a long time
> expecting it to work like any other "usual" CAD program (SolidWorks, Inventor etc.).

Well they do work like usual 2D CAD programs like AutoCAD for example, for making annotations in 2D drawings.

The types of programs you're talking about do use them differently, those are parametric/constraint driven solid modeling programs and they use dimensions as part of their editing UI.


> Because I feel like I am, since so many people looks to be excited about this feature alot.

It's because it's going to make it a lot easier to generate 2D drawings how they need them.


> But now when it's here I see it's basically just an annotation with current measurement
> between selected points. The way I see it- the only benefit is you don't have to click on
> the edge and watch at right upper corner for the measurements. Or am I missing something?

Their primary purpose is for making annotated 2D drawings. Although you can use them for just making measurements that's not their main purpose, they're more of a communication tool that incorporates measuring in it.

If you never need to produce 2D technical drawings or illustrations then yeah they probably won't be too much use for you.


> 2. I am not fully getting 2nd biggest feature too (dimension details). What's the benefit of it? What
> people and for what exact reason are/will be using it?

Some people will use the solid volume calculation on that new dialog as part of their design process.

For dimensions different industries have different ways for how they like to present the annotations like with different types of arrowheads. So there are quite a few different properties on dimensions that change how they look.

- Michael

You have an another some tricky Dimension system inside Moi...by Max Smirnov for more design graphical use! ;)
You can deform the result! English / French

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7403.133

You're right. It's an issue with the import modules of the 2015 versions of our software. Here's an example of one object that was imported into MOI via step format (the format the client delivers) :

"D_1338_00IAM-00-10S14P/LIC18650-TBD PCM PC: 724189IAM-03-METAL PLATE NIL1:2: 724189IAM-03-METAL PLATE NIL1: D_1314_41IPT-03-METAL PLATE NIL1:1: D_1314_41IPT-03-METAL PLATE NIL1: Volumenkörper1"

As you can see, not only awful long names but a lot of extended chars as well. One is interesting (Volumenkörper1) because its supposed to be Volumenkörper (a german word. Client is german).
Not sure if ö got replaced by ö because of the clients export module or if was translated by MOI on import.

If you can provide a script to remove extended characters, that would be indeed very helpful! Thanks a lot!

Sven

Technical drawing is missing from my education.
I'm going to buy this book. Have to see how much of this MoI Dimensions can do.
Click on the book picture for an extensive preview:

https://www.amazon.com/Technical-Drawing-Engineering-Graphics-15th/dp/0134306414

- Brian

Hi Sven,

> As you can see, not only awful long names but a lot of extended chars as well. One is
> interesting (Volumenkörper1) because its supposed to be Volumenkörper (a german word.
> Client is german).
> Not sure if ö got replaced by ö because of the clients export module or if was translated by MOI on import.

If it is possible for you to send me the file to test with at moi@moi3d.com I promise to keep it confidential and then I might be able to test with it and find out if the ö got mangled at import or not.

Also I've been meaning to do something about these intolerably long object names. I think when I updated the import libraries to a new major version the names are getting some kind of STEP "product ID" code or something like that appended to their start. Something like that anyway.


> If you can provide a script to remove extended characters, that would be indeed very helpful! Thanks a lot!

No problem, please try setting up the following on a shortcut key, this should remove any non-ascii characters from object names:

script: var objs = moi.geometryDatabase.getObjects(); for ( var i = 0; i < objs.length; ++i ) { var obj = objs.item(i); if ( obj.name ) obj.name = obj.name.replace(/[^\x00-\x7F]/g, ""); }

- Michael

Hi Brian,

re:
> Technical drawing is missing from my education.

Did you see the link OSTexo posted above:
https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mechanical-engineering/2-007-design-and-manufacturing-i-spring-2009/related-resources/drawing_and_sketching/

That's a nice short overview.

- Michael

>You mean something like having an extra button shown there?

Possibly. I was thinking just having the ability to select "default" or "none" (which would default to the UI font default would suffice.

>That's kind of problematic from a usability standpoint because it gives a lot of weight to the "None" button.

Seems the issue could be resolved by change the verbiage to be something like "reset" or something like that.

>Maybe instead of saying "None (using UI font)..." there I should just show the name of the UI font that's going to be used.

That's what it does now. Before you select a custom font it shows the "None (using UI font).." and after changing it, it shows what the current font is. The issue is there is no way to get it back to the default UI font setting except ot go in and select "Open Sans" and set it to 12pt to get you to the same font and size as the default, But even then, it shows "Open Sans" as the custom font selected.

It seems to me from a consist UI perspective, simply providing a "default" at the top of the font list when you click on the clickable area to select a font, which would reset it to the default UI font and size, would be the best solution.

Thanks for an explanation, Michael.
So it seems when I first heard about these new "Dimensions" I misunderstood them and somehow imagined it will be something like the system in SW/Inventor etc. (probably because I was working in SW for a few years back in the day).
But all clear now. It would be really nice to someday get this feature working just like in apps mentioned before, though :) so fingers crossed!

Love the updated fbx exporter too (especially naming export). Since before this, every time time I changed something in the model and re-exported it to 3DS Max I had to rename all the parts once again (and usually there's like 10-20 of them). And that was a pain in the ass which is now gone, thanks to You.

Hi mantaskava,

> It would be really nice to someday get this feature working just like in apps
> mentioned before, though :) so fingers crossed!

I would like that too, but there is a tremendous amount of work involved in doing that. Those other apps you mentioned before come from companies making literally billions of dollars more than me.

So that's a pretty tall order for me as a single person to replicate the work of a billion dollar company that has had a team working on it for 20 years. It would be cool but it's not particularly feasible, there's a vast discrepancy in the amount of resources.

In general I can be more effective by focusing my energy on things that those other companies are not doing. If you need the things that those apps do then it makes sense to use them too if it helps you get your job done.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

turned out the non ascii characters wasn't the only problem in that case. I modified your script to also remove slashes and colons. Even then the fbx didn't work. After several hours digging through lists of object names, trying to find any suspicious characters I stopped. Possibly the length of the names was also a problem, I don't know. I changed the script again to remove object names *entirely* and then it worked.
Since I don't absolutely need the object names, I"m happy with that.

Thanks again for your help. Btw the new feature having materials exported in fbx is very useful!

Sven

Hi Sven, thanks for letting me know what was going on with the FBX import.

Does that mean that you don't need any option for stripping out extended characters from object names then?

I've also taken a look at why the names are so long, it's because there is this property in a "Product name" and that's getting added to the name as well (sometimes twice I guess) like "Product name: component name". I've updated this for the next beta to only get the component name so I think that should help avoid getting tremendously long names. I'll put in an option to have the long names (with duplication removed) if that was useful for someone.

Thanks,
- Michael

> Does that mean that you don't need any option for stripping out extended characters from object names then?

Well, I'd say it's always a good idea to filter them out but thats more from a general perspective. At one point or another they'll cause problems in a pipeline and to be honest, no one needs them.

So it would be a nice feature to have that option, yes. Do I absolutly need it right now? No, because I can alternatively remove names entirely and that's good enough for me.

- Sven

Hi Sven, ok I'll leave that option for stripping extended characters in then.

- Michael

Hi Michael.

Thanks for the recent update.

I have a question about the SubD From File import option.
I was wondering if your implementation was similar to Catmul-Clark and if so, is there an edge weighting option that we can use to tighten up the mesh?

I have a model in modo that is all quads and all verts are merged. No open boundaries.

When I convert to Catmul-Clark subD with not edge weighting I get this result.



Were I want tight lines and or corners, I simply apply edge weighting.





When I import this model into the latest v4 beta I get this result.



This looks very similar to the conversion to Catmul-Clark in modo without the edge weighting.

My question is, is there a way to apply such edge weighting in Moi upon or after import of such a file?


Thanks

-s

Hi Scooter, yes the sub-d conversion is almost the same as Catmull-Clark, the only differences are at extraordinary vertices.

There isn't currently any way to set the edge weighting in MoI but that is something I want to work on in the future. Additionally the .obj file format does not itself have any method of representing edge weighting so any transfer through .obj format will not preserve edge weighting anyway.

FBX format does have a way to store edge weighting and that's a format that I want to add in the future.

- Michael

Michael,

>Additionally the .obj file format does not itself have any method of representing edge weighting so any transfer through .obj format will not preserve edge weighting anyway.

I thought the edge weighting could be something like Max's SubDiv Beta 9 script, where one uses a slider.
I'd rather see this for imported OBJ files, as opposed to relying on the ever changing proprietary FBX format.

Thanks for the consideration.

-s

Hi Scooter,

> I thought the edge weighting could be something like Max's SubDiv Beta 9 script, where one uses a slider.
> I'd rather see this for imported OBJ files, as opposed to relying on the ever changing proprietary FBX format.

Just a slider after the import does not seem very feasible to me since there isn't any control over what edges are being targeted.

In the future I would like to have it so importing an obj file would result in creating a special sub-d type object in MoI where you could turn on control cage points and move them around, adjust edge weights, etc... For now when there is not the infrastructure in place for making those types of objects it just makes a regular NURBS object.

- Michael

"... In the future I would like to have it so importing an obj file would result in creating a special sub-d type object in MoI where you could turn on control cage points and move them around, adjust edge weights, etc..."

That, I would like to see. It would take MoI to a whole new level.

Ed Ferguson

That sounds feasible to me Michael and would be much appreciated.

Until then, I'm attempting to have the current importer give me the results I'm looking for.

What I've done is to unweld all of the points of my object, in order to take advantage of the "SubD import options" "Open Boundaries" "Keep Corners"

When I import this file into Moi, it sees that all faces are open boundaries and thus retains the sharp corners.
Then, moi appears to weld the patches back together and a create a Solid for me.

Not certain if this has resulted in a true NURBS object though.

Can you test the attached file and let me know what was created?

Thanks

-s