Hi Mark, the way MoI is set up there are very few shortcuts defined by default, just very standard ones for stuff like New, Open, Save, Delete, Undo/Redo.

Then you can set ones you want for things that you use frequently. If you're not using it frequently enough to remember it then probably you don't need to have that shortcut and should just use the button instead.

- Michael

Thanks Michael,
Yes I understand that.
I set a lot of the them and remember most, but swapping between apps and not using Moi for a while seems to be the thing for me.
Anyway just a suggestion, all the best with the new beta.

Michael,

Is there a reason that View > Image > Add places the image on the active cplane, but make2D and File > Import place on the x-y plane of world coordinates regardless of the active cplane?

Hi Peer,

re:
> Is there a reason that View > Image > Add places the image on the active cplane, but
> make2D and File > Import place on the x-y plane of world coordinates regardless of
> the active cplane?

I guess the main reason is that View > Image > Add is an interactive drawing command where you pick inside a specific viewport with the mouse and so at that point it picks up not just the active cplane but also a particular view.

Neither Make2D nor File > Import involve picking a point so the difference stems primarily from that.

For import if you right click on the File > Import button it will launch the "ImportPart" command instead of regular Import and ImportPart lets you pick a placement and orientation of the imported object so that will adapt to the current cplane.

- Michael

Thanks Michael! ImportPart will save me time. By the way, I love how View > Image > Align works.

I use MOI for fixing a lot of geometry outside of a CAD system. I like the way it functions etc. I've dabbled in rhino and considered buying it, but it does have an awesome feature where you draw a grid out and it projects it onto the surface and gives you a fresh clean surface. I suppose it's a little like projecting curves onto a surface and then using a sweep or whatever, but it cuts out the faffing with rebuilding afterwards.

I know nothing about programming and also not trying to compare the two programs. I may be well off the mark here, might be something that no one uses I don't know. Just throwing it out there :-)

Hi Chris, I think you're asking about the "Drape" command in Rhino?

That method doesn't really give very good quality results, there is usually a lot of "stair stepping" kind of artifacts.

For that type of surface reconstruction it would probably be a lot better to convert to polygons, then use a polygon retopology tool to generate quad polygons over it and then bring that back in to MoI using the SubD converter. That would give you a lot more predictable quality than drape.

- Michael

HI, would it be possible to "save" a specific view? It would be great for the ones of us who export 3d views for illustration purpouse. I found it difficult to edit my 3d geometry and use the same 3d view again for the export. Saving and locking a specific view would be great.

Hi Ayer, that's definitely something I want to add. in the meantime there is a plug-in here that can do that now:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=10028.1

- Michael

Looking forward to v5, such a great tool for a technical illustrator! :-)

Something like ViewManager would indeed be nice. Perhaps together with a posibility to numerically change the view. I like the control in Teamcenter visualisation.

In snapshot, it’d be cool to have an indication of what slot is in use? And maybe possibility to name them, name showing up like a tooltip or somthing. Also is it doable to have it remember what objects are visible and hidden?

Regards,
- Bengt

Hi Bengt,

re:
> Perhaps together with a posibility to numerically change the view. I like the control in Teamcenter visualisation.

There are currently some numeric controls for view angles under Options > View > 3D View angles.


> In snapshot, it’d be cool to have an indication of what slot is in use? And maybe possibility to name
> them, name showing up like a tooltip or somthing. Also is it doable to have it remember what objects
> are visible and hidden?

That snapshot function isn't a regular part of MoI, it's from Max Smirnov's CustomUI mod. I don't think he's developing it any further though.

In the future I do want to work on some kind of save/restore state mechanism though.

- Michael

Michael,

I have two scripting requests:

1) A way to get the point at the center of an object. That is, the point that's shown when Object Snap > Center is on. In other words, something along the lines of propertiesPanel.radius. This is for changing the UV directions of a spherical face for hatching.

2) Harmonize the 5 bounding box methods by adding an optional coordinate frame parameter that defaults to the active cplane. Now, the properties panel bounding boxes are aligned with the cplane, but the others are aligned with world coordinates:
GeomObject.getBoundingBox()
ObjectList.getBoundingBox()
ObjectList.getHighAccuracyBoundingBox()

Hi Peer,

re:
> 1) A way to get the point at the center of an object. That is, the point that's shown when Object Snap > Center
> is on. In other words, something along the lines of propertiesPanel.radius. This is for changing the UV directions
> of a spherical face for hatching.

There isn't an object snap for the center of a face that is a sphere surface. The one that you get on a regular sphere comes from the center point of its arc edge curve.

I'll see about adding in some script access for conic sections on faces similar to what there is for curves though, and about adding in a coordinate frame optional parameter for bounding boxes.

- Michael

Michael,

I noticed center snapping on a full sphere, 1/4, and 1/8, and that propertiesPanel.hasRadius seems to be true for any fragment of a sphere, but I guess those are special cases. Thanks for explaining that the center snap point is coming from trim curves.

re:
> adding in some script access for conic sections on faces

I don't understand what this means. To me a conic section means a curve.

The problem I'm trying to solve is getting the UV directions on a spherical face to go in the directions that I want. My plan was select the face, get the radius and center, cache the trim curves of the original face, generate a sphere with the same radius and center but with seam orientation picked with something like an orientation picker, remove the original face, trim this new sphere with the cached trim curves, and then join.

I guess I could draw 2 pointObjects snapped to the surface of the face, dropPoint to get uv coordinate points, evaluate normal at each of the uv points, extend a line along each normal, and find the intersection = center. Is that the best way?

Hi Peer,

Do you have an example .3dm of the surface?

There is a shortcut to mark the center point of a curve.

Conics include circle, ellipse, parabola, hyperbola, and line?

- Brian

Brian,

See attached. The surface is spherical. I want to get the point that's marked with a pointObject. In other words, the center of curvature.

For a Spherical cap:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spherical_cap

Let d = (r-h)
d = sqrt(r*r - a*a)
r = (a*a + h*h) / 2*h
theta = arcsin(a/r)

- Brian
Hasty trig math, check for errors:-)

Hi Peer,

> I don't understand what this means. To me a conic section means a curve.

Yes you're correct, sorry I used the wrong term there.


> I guess I could draw 2 pointObjects snapped to the surface of the face, dropPoint to
> get uv coordinate points, evaluate normal at each of the uv points, extend a line
> along each normal, and find the intersection = center. Is that the best way?

Yes, intersecting 2 surface normals would be a way to get the center currently.

You can get 2 UV coordinates using the domain boundaries instead of dropping points.

var minpt = face.domainMin; // 2d point for UV domain min corner.
var maxpt = face.domainMax; // 2d point for UV domain max corner.

Just don't use the min and the max both directly because those will be at each pole and those normals will be colinear.

So maybe something like 1/3 between them for one point and 2/3 between for the other one.

- Michael

Thanks Michael. domainMin/Max sound very promising. I'll give that approach a try.

A way to get two points on the surface:
Select the edge of the cap.
Run MarkCurveEnd for point 1
Run MarkCurveMidpoint for point 2
Run some script to get the two normals, and intersect.

The two normals can be manually found.

So is a utility script to be created for the 2 UV coordinates method?

- Brian