Hi Michael...

Take a look at this video just for your inspirations...

this last one video is more for "polygon" box modeler ;)

Hi Michael,
since you can enter +2.5 on Z (whence you had 5); would it be possible to incorporate on any given dimension f(d); where f is a function (+, -, *, /) and d is the dimensional value of X, Y, or, Z? This would allow to generate some geometries with proportions; for instance X could be 2*Z. The difficulty for at least a novice user would be to avoid creating a circular relationship.

Cheers,

- Diego -

>>this last one video is more for "polygon" box modeler ;)

Is called Instant3D in Solidworks, It’s an answer to Spaceclaim, CoCreate, Synchronous Technology in Solid Edge and NX, etc. "SketchUp on Steroids" as Deelip Menezes said.

Synchronous Technology is very cool tech which Siemens built on top of the Parasolid. (SolidWorks also is based on Parasolid Kernel) http://www.plm.automation.siemens.com/en_us/campaigns/breakthrough/

http://www.evanyares.com/the-cad-industry/2008/5/21/synchronous-technology-and-design-freedom.html

http://www.synchronoustechnology.net/blog/54/editing-imported-models-the-easy-way/ COOOOOOOOOOL

Hi Anis -

> How to change 3D model directly from 5 to 7mm

This new system will also allow you edit the size of a sub-object like an edge or a face, like this:



I'll probably also be tweaking that a bit, to show length for a line and radius for a circle, rather than x,y,z bounding information for those particular kinds of objects.


But this new system is for setting the size of the entire object, it will not do "constraint" based type operations that may extend and alter interior regions of a shape differently than the shape as a whole.

That kind of interior part modifying requires a lot different kind of mechanism behind it which I don't expect to have incorporated into MoI anytime soon. For that you should use one of those "direct manipulation" style modeling systems instead, like SpaceClaim, Siemens NX, Kubotek, etc... Or it also sounds like there is some new stuff available in SolidWorks for that as well? At any rate, if you need to do those kinds of operations those other modeling systems will be the proper tool for that kind of a job, not MoI.

Just keep in mind that MoI is not particularly focused on being a complete replacement for one of those kinds of modeling systems. If the things you need to do are solved very well already by one of those other systems, then I generally expect that you should use them for that task and not MoI.

- Michael

Hi Diego,

> would it be possible to incorporate on any given dimension f(d);
> where f is a function (+, -, *, /) and d is the dimensional
> value of X, Y, or, Z?
> <...>
> The difficulty for at least a novice user would be to avoid creating
> a circular relationship.

It sounds like you may be talking about setting up some kind of persistent constraint that is enforced through subsequent operations?

That kind of persistent relationship would be quite difficult for me to set up right now.

This tool is a kind of "one shot" scaling mechanism, it does not set up a persistent constraint on an object, just does a direct edit of it.

However, it may be pretty easy for me to make a sub-set of what you are talking about (or maybe this even will directly fit what you want?), which would be to have "x", "y", and "z" variables available to the expression that you type in so that you could enter an expression like: 2 * x for the Y: value. That would edit the shape to have that proportion right then, but not set a persistent relationship. There should not be a problem with cycles since the expression is discarded and replaced by the evaluated numeric result as soon as you push enter.

I'll take a look at that.

- Michael

YeeeHaaawwww! An old friend has come to MoI.

Just to be sure, where you answered:

>>But this new system is for setting the size of the entire object, it will not do "constraint" based type operations that may extend and alter interior regions of a shape differently than the shape as a whole.

It WONT do a single edge? Are points included? Position is next :) !



MoI is SO gui it sticks all over you!

Hi Burr,

> It WONT do a single edge?

Sort of... You can set the length of a particular edge, but it sizes the whole object to get that edge to the size you asked for.


> Are points included?

Not currently but I think I can make that work.


- Michael

Well, Michael, I take my eye off the forum for a little while and what do I find? Editable size and viewable directly at the top of the interface!!

Great stuff - just what I was hoping for. Hats off to you, sir!

Hi Michael,
I believe we're on the same page. Though persistent relationships would be great (like that afforded by a constraint middle-ware engine like D-Cubed); that's not what I was asking about or hoping for now.

Indeed at this point the suggestion, or if you will request, is that whatever object you're editing it would be possible to establish a relationship, albeit temporarily, using the very same variables that originally allowed defining that object. For instance, in the box example you'd be able to make the length equal twice the height (x=2*Z). Or similarly for a cylinder, relating radius or diameter and height.

Cheers,

- Diego -

Hi Diego, I was able to set that up pretty easily:



There are "x", "y", and "z" variables that you can use in an expression.

So for example there I entered "y" in for the X: value, to make x and y values equal to "squarify" the box (make sure to turn "Maintain proportions" off if you want to change dimensions independently instead of doing a uniform scale), and then "x/2" for the Z: value to make the height 1/2 of that starting y extent value.


But it is not quite the full package that you were asking for - this just handles the bounding box around an object, regardless of how it was constructed. So something like a cylinder is not treated any differently than a box.

I will be doing some custom editors for certain entities, but probably those will start out just with a line segment length and a circle radius. But actually since a cylinder has edge sub-objects which are lines and circles, just the line and circle editor should actually work pretty well for editing a cylinder as well.

Being able to edit any combination of the original values that an object was created with is going to be something that goes into a "history" editor which will be a different thing than this size editor thing.

Thanks for the feedback, that was a good idea!

- Michael

Useful :)

And this feature ? (just new in the 7.0 G Sketchup)
Dynamic component
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=4aVW5X-tb8s&feature=PlayList&p=B62D27FCCF0C34C7&index=2

Hi Pilou,

> And this feature ? (just new in the 7.0 G Sketchup)

That is also something else entirely.... Certainly useful in the right situations, but in a very different category of work than what I am doing right now.

That would be like making a special "stairs" command in MoI that knew how to take various parameters and make a staircase automatically. That's possible in the future at some point but currently things in MoI are more focused on general purpose geometry building and not so much on making specialized commands that are for just one very specific kind of resulting model.

Basically it takes some specialized code behind such objects to take those parameters in (and alterations to placement and scale, etc...) and generate a structured specific shape output.

The problem with such things is that you are often stuck with a kind of fixed output in several ways, like for example what if you want stairs that have a rounded end, or have a groove cut down the middle, etc.... ?

With a special "stairs" command it makes it really easy to make a certain kind of stairs that the command was set up to produce, but that does not help you if you want something different than that. But it is helpful for things that use a common set of structures.


This can get added to MoI eventually, but currently the focus in MoI is sort of on a more creative drawing type process and not so much on assembling a set of "standard auto generated components" together.

I mean don't get me wrong, it is useful in many ways to be able to easily assemble many standard things together and I would like to make that easier in MoI in the future. It's just more the concept and energy behind MoI is more in the area of doing creative dynamic stuff more than that currently.


If your model is more of an assembly of totally standardized shapes, then probably MoI is not really the best tool for that, a different program that has put more emphasis on templating and instancing, etc... (like the kind of stuff shown in that video) would be a better fit for efficiency.

- Michael

Yes this sort of thing ask input some different constrains at the start of creation of the component!

Hi Michael,

You wrote

"I mean don't get me wrong, it is useful in many ways to be able to easily assemble many standard things together and I would like to make that easier in MoI in the future. It's just more the concept and energy behind MoI is more in the area of doing creative dynamic stuff more than that currently."

My poor opinion is that this is the way to go.

Regards,



George

Hi Michael....

>> This new system will also allow you edit the size of a sub-object like an edge or a face
Nice, I want to see the effect if "Maintain Proportions" is unchecked.

I know your idea behind MoI is not for replacing some constraint base software.
Here I just want to give you some feedback to improve MoI, I dont want to push your original idea into a wrong place....

Attached is another video ( I dont know how to embed swf file directly to this forum )

Hi Michael ...

Please don't get diverted from your original 'moment of inspiration' ...

I greatly appreciate your willingness to be flexible and to try to include users' wishes but no program suits all potential users.

SketchUp is a personal example ... I actually purchased it few years ago and was initially very impressed with what it would do. And it does what it does pretty well most of the time. Some of my architectural friends rave about it. However, I stopped using it rather quickly and though I still download the latest versions I find it still does not work well for me. It is really not very flexible.

I use Rhino for almost everything, from architectural design to presentation and final drafting ... but I am really excited by MoI ... both because of the more intuitive approach you have taken, to the simplicity of use by comparison to Rhino and numerous other programs. MoI may not replace Rhino for me but I will be using it more and more frequently as a more 'friendly' and flexible companion.

Thanks for all your work and your patience.

eric

Hi Anis,

> Nice, I want to see the effect if "Maintain Proportions" is unchecked.

It will be the same as using the Transform / Scale / Scale1D command - the full object will stretch in that one direction, like this:




> I know your idea behind MoI is not for replacing some constraint
> base software. Here I just want to give you some feedback to
> improve MoI, I dont want to push your original idea into a
> wrong place....

I appreciate the examples! Sometimes it may be possible to see an element of something in there that I could incorporate into MoI. Like the new "Distance from edge" option in the MoI v2 Move command basically happened like that.

But your last examples are not really like that, those are more like things that I would probably need to work on for several years before they would work in MoI (on something other than just a box), either that or I would have to license some expensive components and move the price of MoI up more in line with the price of SolidWorks.

So I just want to make sure that your expectations are in line with what is possible for me to do.

When I see an example of something that is working well in other software and would be difficult for me to add into MoI (difficult either from the amount of work involved, or possibly just not a good fit with MoI's UI), it actually tends to make me think sort of the reverse actually. I mean that I tend to think that I don't really need to worry so much about adding that function into MoI because it is already being handled well by something else. So if you need to do that kind of task you are already covered by using that other software.

- Michael

Thanks George & Eric!