Hi Psygorn, so I think the twisting effect at the close point of the loft is caused from your rotation pattern not ending at a full 360 degree rotation at the end. I think your rotations add up to a final 180 degree rotation at the end so the end does not return to by synched up with the start.

I count 20 stations, and you have a rotation of 45 degrees for each station.

45 x 20 = 900 degrees.

900 degrees / 360 = 2.5

So the problem there is that it's spinning 2 and a half full rotations from the start to the end. The half part is what is the problem, you need the full rotation to be some even multiple of 360 degrees for it to make a non twisted result where the start and end meet up.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

I don't know if this has been asked before, but I would really welcome an auto-complete function for the command input field after pressing Tab.

It would save a lot of assigning and remembering of keyboard shortcuts if you could just press Tab, then start typing "r" and immediately get a little pop-up list with "Rotate", "Revolve", "Rectangle", "Rebuild" etcetera.

Then if you continue typing, "re" would cause only "Revolve", "Rectangle", "Rebuild" and other commands starting with "Re" to remain present in the list, and so on.

The pop-up list would preferably be ordered by command usage frequency (maybe with an alphabetical list sorting option in the Options).

It would also be great if the list would be conditional, meaning that if you start typing in the command input field when no object is selected, commands that operate on a selection would be excluded from the list.

Thanks,

─ Metin

visualizer • illustrator • 3D designer — metinseven.nl

Aha! Thank you Michael! :-)

Didn't know that!

Hi Michael,

In your long list of wishes would be be feasible for MOI to handle direct printing from within the app - I use output to PDF which works a treat especially with templates but a direct to printer would take it to the next level.

Just a thought in case Santa was listening.

Alex.

Hi Alex, re:printing - maybe at some point but there's a lot of potential stuff for handling printing well especially cross platform. I am pretty happy handing that job off to a PDF reader currently.

Stuff like that where it will take a lot of work and the benefit is not all that much tends to lose out in priority weighing.

- Michael

Figured that could be the case PDF it is!

thanks again
Alex.

Dear Michael,

> I'd probably try Array circular with the center point for the array at the center of the object with a vertical step applied. That will make a vertical stack of rotated objects and you can then arrange that onto a circle using Transform > Deform > Flow.

There is an attached file to this reply, I was not able to scatter the curves around a circle. would u please take a look at it and then tell me what I am doing wrong?
I used the flow command and I tired to make sure that the length of vertical line is equal to the perimeter of the circle. However, I was not able to achieve what I wanted ( I want to scatter those squares around the circle and have them equally spaced.)

Hi Psygorn, so the trouble with your case there is the perimeter of the circle and the line are not equal, the circle has a perimeter of 100.97 while the line has a length of 70.

But that's ok they don't actually need to be made equal, there is a "Stretch" option in the flow command that you can set which will make it map from start to end of the base curve to the equivalent percentage along the target curve rather than by distance traveled.

So just set the "Stretch" option to do what you need, be aware of the doubled curve you will have at the start/end position:



- Michael

Hi Michael,

And thank you for your reply :-)

Hi

is it possible to add the coordinates of the last point, near this point ?
( x ,y ,z , angle , length )

the next file is a GIF

Chri

Hi Chri,

re:
> is it possible to add the coordinates of the last point, near this point ?
> ( x ,y ,z , angle , length )

Yes, there are various ways to do that, you can enter in relative coordinates or polar coordinates using a distance and angle, or activate distance or angle constraint.

Information here on how to enter in different kinds of point input:
https://moi3d.com/4.0/docs/moi_command_reference1.htm#__XYZ%20/%20Distance%20/%20Angle

and a lot of details on drawing functions here:
https://moi3d.com/4.0/docs/moi_introduction.htm#drawing

- Michael

Hi Michael

I know that

my question is only to view them, on the screen, near the last point like the Gif file.

Chri

Hi Chri,

re:
> my question is only to view them, on the screen, near the last point

Sorry, no - Moi is intentionally designed not to do that, because displaying a lot of stuff overlaid on the viewport can get in the way of seeing your actual model.

That information is instead displayed at the bottom so you can glance down there to see it very easily yet it does not obscure your modeling area:



- Michael

I understand your meaning Thanks for your quick answers Michael.

Chri

A couple of requests...

- Integration of the .obj executable (Obj23dmWireframe) would be really handy
- Maybe a few more Rhino integration tweaks concerning import of groups (if not blocks) would be a great time saver for those of us who have to run both softs.
- Some form of clipping plane for quick sectional views would be really useful to interrogate complex parts.

Thanks!

(actually, this may be crazy, but is there a way to use the current obj importer to just import obj's at 0 subdivisions?)

- Rich

Hi Rich, re: #2 import groups, I'm not sure if that will be feasible because Rhino's grouping mechanism is kind of limited. The way it works is group membership is more like a tag on an object and there isn't any parent/child relationship set up between groups. It's fairly different from how groups normally work in 2D vector type programs.

So because it's limited I'm probably not going to try and just adopt the same system in MoI, I think it's going to be important to be able to have parent/child hierarchy betwen groups. So it may be difficult for them to go back and forth between MoI and Rhino.

The same thing might apply to blocks as well, Rhino adopted the Autocad block system and it has some really weird interaction with layers. It's also probably not going to be something that would be good to just exactly replicate in MoI.


> (actually, this may be crazy, but is there a way to use the current obj importer
> to just import obj's at 0 subdivisions?)

Sorry, no it doesn't work very well to represent object in CAD/NURBS with a large number of individual planar facets. The way CAD geometry is structured there is some more overhead for each face compared to a poly modeling program because of how there can be an "underlying surface" with trim curves on it marking different areas as active or as holes. it doesn't work very well to have a high face count like you can in a poly modeling program.

There is a separate OBJ import plug-in that Max Smirnov wrote that does that though, you can find it on his file archive here, look for ImportObj:
http://moi.maxsm.net/media/files/

Generally i don't recommend trying to do that kind of import though, MoI is not designed to work with polygon models for modeling. Trying to simulate a poly model by having a large number of trimmed NURBS surfaces usually does not work very well.

- Michael

Great thanks Michael I'll definitely check out Max's import plug...Yes realise the way groups are treated probably wouldn't work out (as I'm sure you'd develop a superior system haha) just wondering if groups could be ignored when importing to MoI, currently having to explode everything in Rhino first (meaning you inevitably get a lot of split up polysurfaces)....Is this another workflow possibly?

- Rich

Hi Rich,

re:
> just wondering if groups could be ignored when importing to MoI,

Do you mean blocks in Rhino? Groups in Rhino should already come over with the grouping just ignored unlike blocks.


> currently having to explode everything in Rhino first (meaning you inevitably get a lot of
> split up polysurfaces)....Is this another workflow possibly?

Try using the "ExplodeBlock" command in Rhino instead of just plain "Explode". I think ExplodeBlock will only convert block instances in to regular geometry, it won't break apart polysurfaces into individual surfaces like regular Explode.

- Michael

Hnmm yeah just doing some tests, perhaps it was nested blocks inside the groups that were giving errors - I'll wait for a test case! Usually given mega files that have been passed down through many hands so hard to work out what might be causing issues - great to know groups are just passed over...Thanks for "ExplodeBlock" also will go into the arsenal...

- Rich

Probably a low priority:
How about a "make copy(s)" option on the Align tool?

MindSet