use the tool on a 3d shape…the usage between the two is quite clear.
on a 2d shape, knife and insert point are essentially identical except knife is slightly easier to use since you don’t have to specifically click an edge.
On a 3d shape knife lets you cut all the way thru the model, similar in concept, if not specific function to wirecut.
there is an option in knife to cut only front facing faces (mimics insert point in function) , or all faces (only knife can do this in one go)
well since we have found what caused the confusion you unfortunately initiated i guess there is nothing more to contribute, since you did not reread the rest of the post asking if its now clear for me when it was long ago i assumed you did not understand it. i hope that clears up all doubts and we can move on from here.
maybe the person responsible for the actual development of the tool should present in future to rule out any further potential confusions. i assume @pierrec has developed it? since question suggestions and contributions should land at his doorstep much rather.
i understand that you are the SubD guy and utterly and thoroughly in love with this topic, still maybe not a good idea to present it when you had not much to do with the actual development. i hope that does not sound harsher than i actually mean, just trying to be sincere.
Pierre is not a user (he is however a brilliant programmer) , and as such is likely not the ideal ambassador. We take all feedback and iterate on the communication of the feature lists - thus the title of this thread Rhino WIP, and not Rhino 9 feature. Once we have a clear description and the feature is release ready, we change it to Rhino 9 feature.
We take all feedback in stride and refine as we march towards a v9 release.
Draw segmented polylines that will snap to the closest edge.
Will this be the default with no option to turn this off? I find that i’ve never needed that to happen, and many other programs have a knife tool that let you cut anywhere in a face.
and what better than to communicate this process directly to the developer.
i dont see any advantage in triangulating that any further. a brilliant programmer is absolutely welcomed to start using Rhino a little more. Rhino is not Rocket Science and Knife is also not that complicated to comprehend, feedback from the people that use it can directly flow where it should without any Chinese whispering misunderstandings.
About inserting new points in a face: RH-92736 Knife: Add points in the interior of faces
I don’t love this idea because it makes temporary topology with vertices that have only two edges connected and can be hard to see in the smooth SubD display. I don’t see why you wouldn’t just Knife the face first with one edge, then Knife this edge to create the new vertex in what used to be the middle of the face.
The top row is what you could do with Knife that inserts points in faces (and a way to insert multiple chains in one run). The middle row is what you can do with Knife and InsertPoint now, and to me that just seems easier and less error-prone. If Knife was able to restart or do mutiple chains faster, this middle row would also be fewer clicks than the top row.
Anyway, I’ll play with it a little bit and see if I can make something good out of it.
And for adding multiple chains in one run of the command, see: RH-92735 Knife: Make it easier to finish a chain and start a new one
I’ll try to make it easier to re-run the command without selecting the SubD again. This way finishing a chain and starting the next one will be just two presses of Enter/RMB/SapceBar.
I don’t like the added complexity of the “Multiple” kind of options, they mess up undo a lot.
can you give an example where undo gets messed up from a command option - user point of view, not developer challenge ?
From a users point of view - “chain and start new one” should be one command call,
similar to 3dFace Append or edge Selection in FilletEdge or DupEdge, trim, DupBoarder etc…
an command-inner undo for each chain would be great
a undo for all edits after one command call has finished.
Finishing a command is also a mental step ! (i am done with adding faces or inserting points)
i think it s important to distinguish 2 kinds of editing:
adding features: the current topology is fine, but needs more edges / features for the next modelling step
rearranging / re-topo the current face/edge layout, beautify it, optimize star-point positions, face-loop-flow and so on.
re-topo
so my wishes are more about this. Here is a less theoretical example.
scan of an scissors-handle, quadremesh:
extract twisted parts (_unjoinEdge, _explode) _bridge (to get the untwisted typology) , pull editPoints to old Surface, ( to stay close to the geometry)
_stich and others…
try it - and try to do as much as possible with knife / insertPoint and you will feel that its not a nice workflow.
and maybe the typology is not subd-ish while the command is running. Deleting an Edge is just not display it, Adding Stuff is just a curve display while the command is running. After all wishes have be input, some validation is creating the new / final sub typology. ??
I totally see your wish to balance power of the command vs. not to many options.
I think the importance is, that the default options give an easy to understand behaviour of the command, so new users can access it easily. But it would be a pity if an option is missing to limit the features for pro-users.
thanks for letting us participate … kind regards -tom
No it does not support multiple consecutive interior face points in the same face, at least not yet:
RH-95677 Knife: Add multiple consecutive points in the interior of the same face
Thanks a lot for trying the new version of Knife so quickly! A lot of changes went in for the WIP on Tuesday, May 19th, and a couple more will go in next week. I don’t think RH-95677 will be fixed by Tuesday unfortunately.
We (@theoutside and I) will be making more announcements soon about these recent changes, hopefully to get everyone to try Knife again.
