Hi Michael,

Is it possible to draw freeform lines on the surface of objects? in perspective/orthographic views?

For example imagine there is a Sphere in the perspective view and one chooses the freeform sketch and draws the desired sketch on the surface of the sphere.

I don't know if it is asked before or if Moi already has this ability.

-Psygorn

Hi Psygorn,

re:
> Is it possible to draw freeform lines on the surface of objects? in perspective/orthographic views?

Currently you can draw curves directly on planar surfaces when picking points in the 3D view, and the construction plane will automatically adjust to the object plane so things like rectangles and circles are oriented to that drawing plane.

For curved surfaces it's a little different, planar drawing commands like circle or rectangle will orient themselves to the surface normal at the first picked point that was snapped onto a surface in the 3D view but the entire drawn curve won't be on the curved surface.

When you are working inside one of the top/front/right 2D orthographic views the focus is on maintaining orientation to that view plane. So the automatic snap plane adjustment to objects only kicks in when you are working in the 3D viewport and not when picking points in the top/right/front viewports. You can relocate the entire frame of reference for the 2D views using View > CPlane though.

Usually it's best with curved surfaces to draw a 2D curve and project it onto the surface.

- Michael

Hi and Thanks for your explanation Michael,

I understand what u said . However I meant an ability to extract some arbitrary lines or closed loops over a selected curved surface/s (and I am not talking about Iso) I just think that could be useful :)

- Psygorn

Hi Psygorn,

re:
> However I meant an ability to extract some arbitrary lines or closed loops over a selected curved surface/s
> (and I am not talking about Iso) I just think that could be useful :)

Can you show an example of what you're trying to make?

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Yes of course, the example attached, I wanted to be able to draw a curve like the red one u see over that object. Somehow I thought maybe there that way I could have a better control of the curve.

Note: I put more thought into it and I think with the current features of Moi achieving things like what I wanted is pretty much possible. and I am willing to take back my request :)

( I mean when I considered how much work it may require to make Moi gain the ability to directly draw on the curved surfaces; I think it may not worth it!)

_Psygorn

Hi Psygorn,

re:
> Yes of course, the example attached, I wanted to be able to draw a curve like the
> red one u see over that object. Somehow I thought maybe there that way I could
> have a better control of the curve.

It's better to draw planar curves and use projection to get that result.

It's most likely that trying to draw a curve like that directly on the surface would
actually be less controllable. Part of the problem with it is that there isn't just one
single way to do it.

Something like drawing a curve in the surface's UV parameter space can tend to have
distortions especially with things like you have here where the surface is compressing
down to a point on one end.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Thank you for your explanation .

_ Psygorn

* Small wish: an address bar in the File explorer while saving / opening files. A section to save Favorite locations for Quick Acess would be great.

* Medium(ish?) Wish: A faster and more interactive way to access / Modify Styles. like having a color cube with a hue slider on the side bar. The color cube toggles between changing the color of selected objects/faces, the background, or modifying the active style. the yellow color indicating selections would temporarily be disabled while changing styles to allow for interactively seeing the new style. Such interactivity would help with design, and open up the doors for MoI to be used for more purposes.

* Huge, huge Wish: that big fillets thingy. and all its children (I presume) like "tweak face" and "delete fillets". that would definitely make MoI the ultimate CAD software. If it's possible to implement once the license is bought, maybe crowdfunding to buy it would work? maybe there's a whale hobbyist somehere who would do it for the whole world? One can only dream.

Hi Flowgun,

re:
> Small wish: an address bar in the File explorer while saving / opening files. A section to save
> Favorite locations for Quick Acess would be great.

MoI uses the standard file dialog which is provided by the operating system. It's up to the OS
to provide something like this in the file dialog UI.

It would take quite a lot of work to make a complete custom replacement file dialog instead
of using the system one. So that's not really feasible.

What operating system are you running on? There might be some kind of utility software
available that could customize the system file dialog.

- Michael

Hello Michael,

Is it possible to extrude a point (vertex) in Moi? ( I know I can drag the vertex at the end of a line/curve however, I think the ability of having it extruded could be useful! )

Also is it possible to have Planar command working on not closed loop of edges?

_Psygorn

Hi Psygorn,

re:
> Is it possible to extrude a point (vertex) in Moi?

Sorry no not currently.


> Also is it possible to have Planar command working on not closed loop of edges?

No, it needs to have a closed planar loop of edges to form a proper trim boundary.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

Ok :-)

Michael,



I note that you provided a more detailed response to a similarly posed question from a few years ago.


Is it just wishful thinking, or does the brevity of your more recent answer hint at the possibility that this is something that you given some thought to enacting?

Rereading that earlier post, ( http://moi3d.com/forum/lmessages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6925.454 ) I was reminded that back then we also discussed making control points addressable. Although I can't find the specific post, I recall (correct me if I'm wrong) that you would be investigating point indexing for a future release. Is this part of the road map for V5?

I fully trust your stewardship of MoI3d, so even if these will not be available in the near future, I am nevertheless still enthusiastic to see what is.

Thanks
James
https://www.instagram.com/nodeology/

Hi James,

re:
> Is it just wishful thinking, or does the brevity of your more recent answer hint at the possibility that
> this is something that you given some thought to enacting?

It hasn't really been on my radar. I took a quick look and I got a little discouraged that the selection
prompt for Extrude says "Select curves, edges, or faces to extrude" and then adding in points means
I have to either make that prompt kind of excessively verbose, or I guess shorten it down to say "Select
objects to extrude" I guess.


> Rereading that earlier post, ( http://moi3d.com/forum/lmessages.php?webtag=MOI&msg=6925.454 )
> I was reminded that back then we also discussed making control points addressable. Although I can't
> find the specific post, I recall (correct me if I'm wrong) that you would be investigating point indexing
> for a future release. Is this part of the road map for V5?

There is a first level of this implemented in the first v5 beta currently, check near the end of the release notes:
"Edit points scripting - Add scripting interface on objects for:"
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=10652.1

- Michael

My bad. the System File Dialog works great in Moi V4 (on windows 10).

tbh, I still use MoI v3 mostly since I encounter performance problems with v4. It's most likely because of my system though. I believe it's something that has to do with Javascript crashing. I also have a very old CPU that I bought for around 15 bucks (i7 3770).

I should be more careful before posting on the forum. I don't want to waste anybody's time, so my apologies.

PS: I keep on noticing these seemingly "Under the hood" improvements between v3 and v4, like support for 7100 FBX, the improvement in File Dialog, and so on. This makes me more excited for v5, as I'm starting to rely more and more on MoI in my workflow. Best of Luck with it!

- Flowgun

Hi Flowgun, no problem. Yes MoI v3 used an older interface for the file open dialog on Windows. MoI v4 was updated to use the latest.

re:
> tbh, I still use MoI v3 mostly since I encounter performance problems with v4.

Do you still see the performance problems with v5?

There is also a setting in v5 to make it use the same Direct3D9 system graphics library that v3 did, you can set that in moi.ini under:
[View]
GraphicsAPI=Direct3D9

If you have a pretty old flaky video driver that worked better with MoI v3 that could make v5 behave more like v3 on your system possibly.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

When saving as a PDF, I wonder how hard it would be to offer the option to append a new page if the PDF already exists? For me the use case would be the many times that I'm appending the PDFs of different views of something to produce a document to share. If it is not too difficult, I would find this quite handy!

I realize that PDFs are complex, so if it would make such a feature simpler to implement, maybe the option is only offered if the existing PDF is "easy" to work with, for example created by MOI?

--Larry

Hi Larry,

re:
> For me the use case would be the many times that I'm appending the PDFs of different
> views of something to produce a document to share.

For this use it seems like it might work better if you could generate the multi-page PDF all in one go from some kind of list of saved views.

I think it might be possible to make a script that would do a "save to PDF append page" if I can set up a helper utility program for it to call to do the merge. The PoDoFo library that MoI uses for PDF handling has a utility like that in it so I'll give it a try.

- Michael

Hi Michael,

> I think it might be possible to make a script that would do a "save to PDF append page" if I
> can set up a helper utility program for it to call to do the merge. The PoDoFo library that MoI
> uses for PDF handling has a utility like that in it so I'll give it a try.

Assembling the individual PDFs into a multi-page document isn't a problem for me (just a small hassle),
but the thought occurred that if it was relatively easy to append to an existing PDF it would be quite
handy. I'll look forward to whatever you come up with & appreciate as always your willingness to help!

--Larry

"Wish" list....

Continuity controls added to sweep curves and rails.

Sortof the same work as 4 sided continuity added to network and nsided.

:)