Man, that's nuts!
Makes me wonder if gears like this could be Flowed onto a sphere and actually be functional with their distorted proportions... hmmm....



Imagine a game of Hot Potato where the "looser" gets his hands on the ball just as the thing starts moving. =-0

I believe that he made that with SketchyPysics in Sketchup so that is reallly functionnal !
http://code.google.com/p/sketchyphysics/

It's possible...



I was a little worried that I got rusty on using the Flow tool. The gear first looked "squared" when I Projected it to the sphere.
I provided a base plane that was made of a Network of four Arcs so that the corner control points were closer in proportion to the center and de-warped the resultant object.
In practice - if I was to construct a model of gears based on a sphere I would use actual shape-to-sphere surface cuts that matched the radial proportions of the sphere.

Waouh! Completely crazy these balls of gears. I will not put a finger in this mechanical; it's useless. Miaaaaooowww!!!

Magikmike; indoor, just a cardboard box, like the one of removal, makes the pleasure of a cat.
Yes, the cat doesn't think as human, & I asked me what color the cats should to prefer? I see just one answer, the colors that exist in nature; so green, colors of bark of tree, or some colors of stone. The cats are animals very fussy & not easy, with a strong mind of contradiction (be a dissenter). As any animal, they have the ability to feel what you think. So sometimes I accuse them to make intentionally the contrary, just to say to you: "Hey biped! it's me that decides; not you".

A house: http://www.hortondome.com/dome/ (nice outside, but inside it's dubious; as too much geodesic houses).

Yes, it's not that cats think they are humans too, but that cats think we are also cats.

That makes sense, using natural coloration and texture.

It is also known that cats like to sleep in higher places, to be above their potential predators.
So maybe one could design a "tree-like" stand for the MinouDôme to rest on. :-)

Like that? (but this one is for chicken... ohoh.. the cat will be also a chicken).

and that one for plants..

I just come to see the poverty of imports in MoI.

Because to make a good geodesic dome, we need the right measures of the struts, connectors and pannels; it's not a so simple polyhedron. So I ask me how we can import dxf, obj, 3ds?
I have tried to import a .igs file converted with Amapi Pro 7.5, but MoI doesn't open nothing.

Somebody have a solution?
Why MoI cannot import all the formats that it exports very well?

Amapi Pro is yes IGES but the file must be not nurbs only "polygons"!

See the French forum part ;)
http://moi3d.com/resources#Obj23dmWireframe_converter

Here is a sketchup model:

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=b9f35baa56a98f1b25d566c584e5a53d

Use Meshlab (free) to export to Alias wavefront object (.obj)

Use Michaels Obj23dmWireframe to get .3dm

Yes same solution than mine above :)

You have also that
http://www.integrityware.com/subdnurbs_workflows.html
but not idea of the price and even if it's released :)

Hi Bard,

> Why MoI cannot import all the formats that it exports very well

MoI is set up to work with NURBS data at modeling time. Polygon mesh data is a different type of data than NURBS data - MoI can export to various polygon mesh formats by taking it's broad smooth NURBS surfaces and dicing them up into little polygon facets but it is not easy to go the reverse direction and take already diced up facets and recombine them into large smooth spline patches.

So that's the reason why MoI can export to more kinds of formats than it can import.

See this previous thread for some more explanation:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3880.2

- Michael

Rhino exports & imports, all these types of files:
.3ds (3dstudio max); .ai (Adobe Illustrator); .asc (points); .csv (points); .csv (properties); .dgn (MicroStation); .dwg (AutoCAD); .dxf (AutoCAD); .fbx (Autodesk); .gdf (WAMIT); .gf (GHS - General Hydrostatics Geometry); .gft (GHS - General Hydrostatics Geometry); GHS (General Hydrostatics Geometry); .gts (GNU Triangulated Surface); .kml (Google Earth); .lwo (LightWave 3D); .obj (Wavefront); .off (Geomview); .pdf (Portable Document File); .pm (GHS - General Hydrostatics Geometry); .pov (Persistence of Vision Raytracer); .ps (PostScript); .raw (Raw Triangle); .rib (RenderMan); .sat (ACIS); .skp (SketchUp); .slc (Slice); .step (Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data); .stl (Stereolithography); .txt (points); .udo (Moray); .vda (Verband der Automobileindustrie); .vet (Viewpoint); .vrml (Virtual Reality Model Language); .vrml (Virtual Reality Model Language); .x (DirectX); .x_t (Parasolid); .xgl (Solaris); .txt (points). And not MoI.

It's a incredibly Jungle of formats, often just to make only wrong 3D, true 2D perspectives, or to keep a juicy market just for its trust (ex.: Cathia Solidworks 3DCad = Dassault, gunrunner, arms dealer; see Autodesk; Max, Maya). If all that was real, I will take a chain saw, to clear out the place. Is the developers are bad woodcutters? May be... May be. Help Mr Pierre Bézier! Come back again! ... To have very powerful computers to make forests of icebergs? It's not "glop" not "glop" ("pas glop" is a onomatopoeia of Roudoudou, a french strip cartoon, that said in substance: "not terrible; not good; not great; I don't like", it's like a sort of gobbling, glug-glug).

Well, so It must to produce shoddy work, to do DIY, to tinker (Oh lala! English has not the verb "Bricoler" = To make trouble bits and pieces = "Des Bricoles", bits; "du Bricolage", just been thrown together; a bad do-it-yourself).
Ok! I go to make a bit with this jungle, but, not glop, not glop.

Trial succeeds via:
1° - Import a .3ds file in Meshlab.
2° - Export to the format .Obj
3° - Start the stand-alone plugin Obj23dmWireframe
which converts the file .OBJ format, into a MoI file .3 DM

3 times in 2 movements I got the perfect structure of a Geodesic Octahedron Frequency 6.

An octahedral Dome has the advantage to fit on traditional buildings; & unlike Google tips library, my file is designed for a true realization of a dome; its base is flat, & all its dimensions of struts, connectors, pannels + all the angles, are known at start.

Use CadreGeo6: http://www.cadreanalytic.com/cadregeo.htm ; to create any appropriate or suitable geodesic structure, & to obtain all the parameters for the construction of the dome.
This is the only engineering program, very affordable price, enabling for any designs, any kinds, of reliable geodesic structures. A module for Google Sketchup also exists (but I don't clink at all to this program & its library of tinkerers).

See you a later.

Hi Bard,

> Rhino exports & imports, all these types of files: <....>

This is not quite correct - many of the ones that you list there are for export only and not import, such as .pov, .ps, .udo, .xgl, .gts, and several others I think.

In general coding an exporter tends to be much easier than doing importers.

Definitely over time Rhino has accumulated a lot of different exporters, many of which are used for some pretty specialized software.

With MoI I'm generally more focused on trying to do a higher quality export to some more core frequently used formats, rather than simply trying to do a huge list of them.


> And not MoI.

Actually MoI and Rhino share the same 3DM file format for their native formats. In Rhino it will be listed as "Rhino 3D Models" and is usually the top one on the file types list.

- Michael

>but not idea of the price and even if it's released :)

$3000 for the 3dsMax plugin :D

Autodesk acquired T-Splines so subdnurbs from integrityware is obsolete within the Autodesk ecosystem. lets hope Autodesk will do a good job with Tsplines inside Fusion http://www.facebook.com/InventorFusion (I like the mac UI BTW)

Integrityware should contact Michael from the start and help him to integrate subdnurbs inside MoI instead of trying to sell plugins for Modo Max etc.

So Moi's price * 10 for just a plugin ;)

Isn't it pathetic?

$1600 for Rhino+t-splines.

Not to forget that T-splines is NOT just a converter.

As I said before they should thank Michael for putting Solids++ back on the map and help him grow MoI.

Now Autodesk T-splines plug-in cost two times more...???

http://store.autodesk.com/DRHM/store