A new v2 beta (version Nov-21-2008) is available for download here: http://moi3d.com/beta.htm

You will need to enter your v1 license key to download the v2 beta.

The v2 beta installs into its own folder, it is not a problem to have v1 and any v2 beta installed on the same machine, in fact I recommend that so that you can fall back to v1 if you run into some temporary bad bug in v2.


New stuff for this version:


New object properties panel:




This is a new panel that shows up in the upper-right area of the window, that gives some information about the selected objects, and lets you change different object properties.

This panel shows up when you are in "Selection mode", which is before you are running a command.

The current properties shown are object name, object type, and object size. Other stuff such as object color will be coming along in the next betas.

To set the object name, move your mouse over that part of the panel and you will see it highlight, then click to pop up a name edit box. At the moment the name is not used for much, it should become more useful when some more stuff is added for the next betas.

The object type will tell you some basic information about the object, for example if your object is a fully closed solid it will say "Solid" there. The type is one of the following: Curve, Closed crv, Edge, Face, Surface, Joined srf, Solid, Point.

Also if you have multiple objects selected the number of objects selected will be shown there as well.

The object's bounding box size (in world coordinates, or in cplane coordinates if a custom cplane is currently set) is displayed as well, and you can click it to edit the size. Certain objects have special size values - a line will display length, a circle, arc, sphere, or trimmed cylinder will display radius, and a full cylinder or cone will display radius and height.

When editing the size, there is a "Maintain proportions" option you can turn on or off to control whether to edit the size in a uniform way or whether to allow it to stretch in only one direction when a value is edited.

When you enter a new size, you can enter in numeric formulas (for example: 22 / 5 * 4) and there are also the following variables can be used:

x	bounding x size
y	bounding y size
z	bounding z size
r	radius
d	diameter
h	height of cone or cylinder
l	length of a line

So for example if you want to set a cylinder's height to be twice its current radius you can do that by unchecking "Maintain proportions", and then enter r * 2 into the Height: field.

You can also enter a value starting with + or - in a field to make a relative adjustment. For example if you enter in radius: +5 it will add 5 to the current radius.


A demo of editing sizes:





New unit system labels (cm, mm, in, ft, etc...) show up after most numeric coordinate input fields if you have set a unit system.


Updated Feet & Inches type unit input so that you can leave off the final inch " mark, so for example you can type in 5'2 for 5 feet 2 inches.


FBX export bug fixes - fixed welded export which was totally messed up, and also fix a bug where writing to a filename that had non-ascii characters in it would not work right.


SketchUp .skp export bug fixes - export unit system (cm,mm,etc..) scale properly, and fix a problem where SketchUp does not like to have adjacent points of a single polygon placed too close to one another. This should fix all the reported problems with SketchUp export, please let me know if you run into any other issues.

Also added curve export for SketchUp .skp format, which will break curves up into polylines to write to the .skp file. To avoid creating duplicate curves on top of surface edges, curves are not written by default if you do a regular Save of a model that contains both surfaces and curves. Curves will be written if you save a model that contains only curves in it, or if you select them and use File / Export (which writes out only the selected objects), rather than Save or Save As.


New option for placing the side pane to the right or left under Options / General.


Fixed a bug where certain trimmed spheres could get an incorrect display or export mesh.


Performance improvement to Transform / Mirror - quite a bunch of extra work on UV curves was eliminated from mirroring, so it is several times faster on complex models than previously. There is still some work that I will be able to do to improve the speed of transformations in general, but this is a pretty good step for Mirror.


Updated filleter to tolerate partial failures. So for example if there was a problem building one corner or one fillet, the whole operation will no longer fail and instead give back the parts that it was able to calculate.


A couple of fixes for boolean union - There is a new process used for doing a union of a larger batch of shapes, like a whole bunch of smaller pieces being unioned to one larger main piece which should handle those situations much better. Also when using Union to glue together adjacent surfaces same as Join there were situations where some edges would not get joined, this is now fixed.


Tune up for the default extrusion direction on non-planar objects. Previously when extruding a non-planar curve it would just default to the world z direction. Now instead it will do a best fit plane of the object and pick the closest axis of the construction plane to that plane normal. So if you have an object that is relatively close to being planar but not quite, it should now default to extrude in a more expected direction.


Fixed reading units settings from Rhino v4 .3dm files .


Changed how height is applied for the Draw Solid / Text command - the height will now control the "ascent" height of the text, from the baseline to the top of an upper-case letter, rather than the whole text cell including descenders like it did previously.


Update numeric expression handling - trig functions (tan, sin, cos, etc..) for typed-in expressions now take input in degrees rather than in radians. Radian input is still available by using an underscore version like _tan(PI).


New moi.ini setting for excluding unwanted file types from the file dialog:
[FileDialog]
ExcludeFileTypes=FBX,3DS


Fix a regression where the orientation / seam picker was broken in the last beta.


Improved quad generation for surfaces of revolution - previously a few quads along the seam of a revolved surface could get an extra refined point in them, making them into n-gons instead of quads. Those should now come out as all quads now instead.


Fix for small cracks in generated meshes in certain circumstances with almost but not quite matching UV grid alignments, reported in the forum:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=2091.1


Updated IGES export to export lines, arcs, and circles as analytic entities instead of as generic spline curve entities. Analytic export is enabled by default and can be disabled by a moi.ini setting:
[NURBS Export]
WriteAnalytics=y


Added option to rotate models from SAT, IGES, and STEP imports, by 90 degrees from a y-up orientation to a z-up one:
[NURBS Import]
RotateYUpToZUp=n


Updated .eps format import to handle some additional flavors of .eps data.


Fix PDF import bug where PDF files generated by AutoCAD were not imported properly.


Make right-click on the Save button in the bottom command bar do a "Save As".


Change how the OK / Cancel buttons are displayed, to avoid a bug in IE8 beta 2 - this version of MoI will now run fine with IE8 beta 2 installed.


Update shell to merge coplanar faces when thickening a surface model into a solid. Previously a set of ruled surfaces would be created, making one face per edge, even when many edges were on the same plane.


Some changes in snapping behavior:

By default now surface normal straight snap is disabled in ortho views unless the normal is perpendicular to the view direction. This helps avoid unintentional tracking along surface normal lines when trying to draw a planar curve in an ortho view. The old behavior can be restored by changing this setting in the moi.ini file:
[Drawing Aids]
StraightSnapDisableSurfaceNormalInOrtho=y


By default now onsrf snap is disabled in ortho views. Since surfaces can occupy a larger area of the screen, having onsrf object snap on in ortho views could tend to get in the way when you were trying to draw a number of planar curves on the construction plane. The old behavior can be restored by changing this setting in the moi.ini file:
[Drawing Aids]
DisableOnSrfInOrtho=y



Also quite a number of additional smaller bug fixes, stuff for some construction plane issues, tab key handling, etc...


Please let me know if you have any problems!

- Michael