Hi John,

> It appears that MOI is the least expensive option, but I
> am considering just going ahead and getting Rhino and
> be done with it as it seems that I will not outgrow Rhino.
>
> Can you guys convince me that MOI is a better way to go?

Well, it's hard to give a recommendation just in a vacuum, it really depends a lot on what kind of models you want to create.

Do you have some examples of the stuff that you want to do?

If your models are based off of things like Extrusions and Booleans, then the tools already in MoI will probably handle that kind of stuff for you completely, there won't be any "outgrowing" issue.

If you intend to do more exotic or fancy kinds of stuff than that, then it could possibly be an issue, but like you've heard from other people there are many people who like to use MoI and Rhino in combination with one another. That's because MoI has a newer and more streamlined UI design which helps to get the basic stuff done more fluidly and quickly with less learning curve.


> Is it possible to get an evaluation copy of V2?

It will be once v2 is finalized and released, which should be coming up pretty soon.

There is an collection of all the notes on new stuff in v2 here:
http://kyticka.webzdarma.cz/3d/moi/doc/V2releasenotes.html


> V1.2 definitely has missing features that would lead me to go to Rhino instead.

Like what kinds of things? If you can list the specifics that you are looking for, I can tell you if they will be in v2 or not.


> I have quite a bit of CAD experience so teh CAd like nature of
> Rhino is more of a plus than I minus.

In this case, Rhino may feel a lot more natural to you than it does to just the average person who does not have AutoCAD experience. If Rhino feels comfortable to you and you like how it works, then probably it would be a good option for you to get it.


> Also I am very used to using construction planes in my
> work flow. Will they be fully supported in V2?

Yes, MoI v2 has added a Construction Plane function so you can relocate the drawing plane (and the Top/Front/Right views) to be oriented relative to a particular local frame of reference so you can more easily draw and model things hanging off of an existing part.


Also, one other factor - MoI actually offers some functions that are not in Rhino at all, such as the ability to export clean n-gon meshes into rendering programs.

So some people actually use MoI along with Rhino in order to use some advanced functionality that MoI has that is not in Rhino, it's not always the other way around.

It's pretty nice to have both because they tend to complement one another and you can move data back and forth easily with Copy/Paste.

- Michael