Tablet CAD doubles as concepting tool

Moment Of Inspiration, or MoI for short, is the latest small CAD application to try to solve the concepting problem. In the last year this seems to have been the problem to solve. SolidWorks 2008 repackages the Move/Size features, calls it Instant3D and dubs it concepting functionality. Spaceclaim is all about editing for non-users or concepting in a Sketchup-like environment. And now Moment Of Inspiration takes a crack at the tablet PC concepting tool for designers and artists.I can’t comment on using MoI on a tablet PC, because I don’t have one. Maybe someone who has one could install it and see how usable it is. Ralph Grabowski says he has it loaded on a tablet, and may provide an update on his blog. It seems to have the right stuff for that sort of application; it is a small install file (an amazing 4.7 MB!), and has a compact and simple interface which seems well organized.Still, it installs on a regular PC, and seems to run fine. At first glance, you might be excused if you confuse MoI for Rhino. It comes up with the default 3 orthographic and 1 isometric view the same way that Rhino does. It has that soft gray ambiance that you get in Rhino as well. Still, this is not Rhino. Rhino is a full-powered but still budget surface modeler. MoI is a general purpose geometrical concepting tool. MoI is also a budget app, undercutting Rhino and Spaceclaim significantly in the $195 range. Interestingly, although MoI is not Rhino, it saves files in the same *.3dm format as Rhino. This means you can open Rhino files with MoI.

The interface is clean and easy to use, even if it is not exactly a Windows standard. Or maybe because it’s not Windows standard, depending on your point of view. It is fairly intuitive to use, which is a good thing because the Help documentationis very sparse. That’s forgivable at this point, because the software is still in beta, and Michael Gibson seems to be doing a good job of keeping people informed on his forum. MoI does not use right mouse button menus because they are awkward on the tablet PC.

The file types you can save as are shown here. IGES is the only standard NURBS type surface format. The modeling kernel is said to be Solids++, which I am not familiar with, but you can read all about it at the link.
A couple of the features in this tool that are completely stunning to me are the fact that with fillets, you have the option to create circular, G1, G2 or G3 fillets. It’s not clear to me what the difference between circular and G1 is, but this is impressive. I hope SolidWorks takes notice of this functionality in a $195 tool.Other great ideas in MoI are that there seem to be no differences between curve items and sketch items. Also, construction geometry is created by using click-drag and regular sketch entities are created by click-clicking. I think this is much superior to the current SW way (both click-click and click-drag create standard sketch entities, and changing to construction is a separate operation) which is simply trying to cater to new AutoCAD users. Aren’t we past that yet?

MoI can work in a combination of solids and surfaces, although it doesn’t really make any distinction, and solids can be created by using boolean operators on surfaces. MoI is not exactly parametric-history based, but it is not exactly not parametric-history based either (did you catch that? did I say what I meant to say?) In some cases you can access and alter underlying sketches used to create a shape, but there doesn’t seem to be a history tree. There is a button in the Edit area that says History, although I can’t make out exactly what to do with it.

In terms of “features”, what can MoI do? It has extrude and revolve, the revolve has a Rail Revolve, which looks like a closed loop loft to me. There is also a loft and a sweep, along with Blend and Network surface features. There is also a projected curve. You can draw standard curve types, and solid primatives as well. There are various editing, mirroring and copying functions too.

It’s not SolidWorks, it’s not Rhino or Maya or modo, it’s not Spaceclaim or sketchup. It doesn’t require massive training or experience, but it will require better documentation, and maybe some simple tutorials. They do have a few things SW could learn from. If you have a tablet PC and like to 3D doodle, this may be the ticket for you. I will be interested to see what sort of tools they add to it. This will not replace SW, and it doesn’t seem to be the kind of technology that SW would purchase or license except maybe to get access to the developers or the guy with the vision. I know SW is interested in concepting shapes quickly and easily, and that they know they don’t have a tool that does this currently.