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[Steve]

Unobtainium: Good ideas. I'm already planning on a surface area metric in the properties dialog. Selected surface area is essentially the same. Volume is a great idea that goes along with 3D printing.

I've made some attempts at boolean operators before but never had time to finish. They are challenging to do well - floating point numeric inaccuracies present a variety of problems with thing like almost parallel faces - but I agree that they would be a good addition to Anim8or.

[Trevor]

The Boolean Scripts developed on this forum are pretty good.
Theres a few limitations I wish they didnt have, like, not being able to cut a hole in a floor because a level mesh is considered an open body...

On basic elements like 2 cylinders converted imediatly to mesh and then Operated on it works great.

On complex mesh's they start to falter and complain of convex faces etc.

I commented in the development thread but it seems to have been burried so Ill re-comment here.
I Like the ideas produced on the previous page except for the cluttered comment.
The ideas of surface/tri area and object volume are excelent.

I still suggest having every line draw its legnth and angle to previose point when using the line tool (Object Mode) or on selection of a 'line' in Vertex Edit Mode.

I dont think that this could be considered 'cluttered'

I just quickly painted a mock-up (lacking rotated text and drop shadows etc) of both examples.

Trev

[Unobtainium]

I like the suggestion of showing line lengths & angles. The boolean scripts are nice to have by the way, albeit slow at times (no way around that with ASL I guess) and yeah, on more complex meshes problems tend to occur.

Personally I don't think the interface looks very cluttered in image you attached, however with a denser set of lines... I don't know. Perhaps, as said earlier, a CAD mode button is an ok solution to fit everyone's needs? (Just thinking "out loud" here.)

[cooldude234]

Trevor I 100% agree!
I think that mockup is exactly how it should be layed out (with the idea from unobtainium of having a cad mode button).

[Trevor]

Yes, so when Steve applies rotation and drop shadows to text it will look sooo much better.

I was trying to think of an architecturial subject item that would be more complex but forgot that text is considered a 'line' and so that would be thousands of little straight lines.

If im not mistaken though, text uses 'Smooth Line' which I deliberatly left out of the CAD Measuring system for this reason.

As soon as this is implemented though I can start modeling rooms and buildings with confidence by Y-Extrusion.

Trev

[cooldude234]

If im not mistaken though, text uses 'Smooth Line' which I deliberatly left out of the CAD Measuring system for this reason.

What do you mean text uses smooth line?

[Trevor]

If you look at my image above, the left window uses the 'Line' Tool (Pressed) the button next to it (little squiggle) is 'Smooth Line'

Actually... I just found the tooltip button again and they are called
Straight Path and Curved Path.

Trev

[cooldude234]

Actually... I just found the tooltip button again and they are called
Straight Path and Curved Path.

Okay that makes more sense because smooth line usually refers to AA (anti-aliasing).
But you say that text is made out of lines.

but forgot that text is considered a 'line' and so that would be thousands of little straight lines.

Which I am sure isn't true. I wouldn't even say Steve is rastering it to the screen. It look's like the majority of text (in the Opengl viewport) is being blit straight to the framebuffer itself (woo! old school).

ALSO (just to be clear)
I think this feature should have it's own button (the CAD button) which would enable the ability to edit paths based mathematics and with an overlay.
Just that way you can separate the simpler modeling tools from the CAD ones to make the UI more organized.

[Steve]

You're correct, cooldude234. Text in Anim8or is raster not vector. Vectors can look fairly ugly, especially when small. Plus OpenGL drivers have a lot of latitude in how the draw lines so it's hard to make vector text good looking on all graphics chips.

[Trevor]

hmm... if text if raster then for do you do the modeling commands to it like fill and extrude, or even lathe if you want .

This is why I assumed it was a curved path, because it uses the same tools.

Trev

As for Seperate CAD button, it is already. the rullers dont show up unless you enable CAD mode.

[Steve]

Trevor and Unobtainium: Check out the CAD line lengths in Spline and Add Edge modes in Build 1112. To keep the clutter down I only show the lengths of selected segments.

[Unobtainium]

Good work. There seems to be a tiny bug: Sometimes when selecting splines/edges, two lengths are shown as if another spline/edge is selected as well. The "ghost" selection seems to depend on which previous spline/edge was selected.

[Steve]

If you can send me an example or a screen capture that would help.

It's tricky to show the right balance of information on the screen. For splines, I'm showing the length of all selected segments and the coordinates of selected knots that are not next to a selected segment.

One thing I did to reduce the clutter is to deselect all the previously selected segments and knots when you add a new segment. It can be useful to keep them selected, though, and I can see how it could be useful to keep them selected. Any feedback is appreciated.

[Unobtainium]

I meant to say it happens when one spline/edge is selected at a time - if one segment is mouse pressed by me, it's length shows at that segment as expected, but then another segment's length also shows at that unselected segment, be it spline or edge. (This is what happens some times. A pattern has so far eluded me though I think there may be one.)

When selecting several splines/edges at a time things work fine. Deselection of previously selected segments & knots when adding a new one works fine, display of knot coordinates works fine.

I will throw together a picture with several screen captures to show how the unselected segment length jumps between segments when I click around on splines/edges.

EDIT: Picture is attached along with system specs.

[cooldude234]

To keep the clutter down I only show the lengths of selected segments.

I think this kinda defeats the purpose a bit. I noticed that it wasn't too cluttered with the line segment lengths being shown on both high res monitors and low res monitors (as I show in the attached image). I think most of the clutter comes from the 'ruler' and when you select an object (especially when you have bounding boxes enabled).
Personally when I am wanting to know the lengths of things, I want to know the lengths of everything else so I can compare them even while editing them. I also noticed that even if they are selected if you select another tool that isn't the line or spline tool (eg the selection tool) it will not show the lengths.

Another thing, why can't I edit the lengths by typing in the numbers manually. I know of a couple pieces of cad software that allowed you to do this by typing in the numbers down at the bottom where it displayed it's lengths (where anim8or displays positions and tool effect info).
And another thing when I press the alt key it enables and disables the camera movement. I was trying to alt print screen to capture just the window and ended up capturing the giant green circle as well :| maybe I should call over the golly green giant and have him play hula hoop for a while.

But thank you for listening to all our complaints and doing something about them because most developers suck when it comes to that