Resources
Links to useful MoI information on the web (French version here)
MoI help file online (French) (German) (Spanish) (Italian)
Petr's MoI page, contains a variety of MoI information including scripts and custom commands.
Language packs: (Spanish help file) (Italian UI and help file)
Contents
Tutorials
MoI documentation video tutorials
Steph's video tutorials - note one of the older quicktime ones needs this codec, and you may need to hit "reload" on your browser after waiting for it to load before it will play.
Daniele's halogen lamp video tutorial
Joe's classical column video tutorials
Ring tutorial by Jesse Kaufman, and #2, #3, #4, #5, #6
Simple ring using rail revolve, and variant using sweep + scaling rail for more control
Product design forums modeling challenges (not specific to MoI but useful for general CAD modeling strategy).
Modeling a water can out of one smooth surface
Helper programs
Some standalone small programs to help accomplish specific tasks.
Obj23dmWireframe converter
Download Obj23dmWireframe converter
This enables bringing polygon data in an .obj file into MoI to use as a construction guide. Unzip it to some folder, and then you can run the Obj23dmWireframe.exe program. It will prompt you for the name of an .obj file to read, and after that the name of a .3dm file to create. It will read all the polygon data from the obj file and convert the edges of polygons into line segments, and then write those line segments to the 3dm file. You can then load that 3dm file into MoI and use those line segments to snap on to. Originally posted on the forum here.
3dmCurves2DXF converter
Download 3dmCurves2DXF converter
This enables converting curves from .3dm to .dxf format, to help export data from MoI to some CAM programs. Unzip it to some folder, and then run the 3dmCurves2DXF.exe program. It will ask you for the name of an input .3dm file, and then the name of an output .dxf file. It will read through the input .3dm file and convert any curve objects it finds to Spline entities in the DXF file. Originally posted on the forum here.
SeparateOBJ editor
This will edit an .obj file to break objects down into smaller pieces to help with material assignment in some other programs such as Poser, HyperShot, and Bryce.
If your .obj file was exported with default settings, this will break apart pieces between any sharp edges. For example, a box will break apart into 6 different objects. But if you have rounded all the edges of the box so they are smooth, it will remain as one single piece. However, if you export your .obj file with "Weld vertices along edges" unchecked (expand the Meshing options dialog with the arrow in the bottom-left corner to see this setting), then that will set things up so that all surfaces will be broken out into individual pieces, including pieces that are smooth with one another.
To use the program, unzip it to some folder, then run the SeparateOBJ.exe program. It will ask you for the name of an .obj file and after you give it one it will edit the obj file to break larger objects into smaller object pieces, and also assigns separate material ids to each piece, which HyperShot needs to have present to assign materials to different pieces of the file instead of just one material for everything. Originally posted on the forum here and here.
MergeOBJ editor
This will edit an .obj file to combine all the different objects in it into one single object. This can be useful if you only want one single material for everything instead of having things split up into different objects. To use it follow the same instructions for SeparateOBJ above.
Blender importer
Download Blender import script
Anthony D'Agostino wrote a custom blender .lwo import script to enable exporting data from MoI to Blender while preserving the accurate vertex normals to get high quality smooth shading. To use the script, you need to turn vertex welding off when you export from MoI - in the Mesh options dialog, click the small arrow in the lower-left corner to expand to detailed options, and uncheck "Weld vertices along normals". Getting the accurate normals makes a significant difference in increasing render quality, it eliminates small shading glitches that happen when the shading normals are created just from averaging adjacent polygons. More information in the forum post.
