On Fri, 24 May 2002 22:23:11 -0400, "Timothy R. Cook" <z99### [at] bellsouthnet> wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
> > There is absolutely no way to produce a model by scaling and
> > rotating something like a cylinder that will 'ever' be as
> > accurate as specifying the end points directly and I gave
> > up trying. Sadly a box can't be defined that way in
> > either the SDL or Moray, so some limitations still
> > exist either way, but they are imho worse in Moray. 
> 
> I dunno, I almost never position stuff by moving it around
> with the mouse; I use the xyz input boxes, occasioanlly
> fudging around when moray's precision runs out.  But as
> far as I can tell, it is quite easy to accurately specify
> end points for objects, or at least the centre of the
> object and figure out everything else using calculator.
> 

Hmm. This is true. I 'never' use the mouse to position stuff, but if I am going to use
a calculator then
why bother using Moray in the first place. In general there is no easy way to 'draw' a
blue print in
Moray and work off it, so I end up drawing the blueprint on normal paper. making
measurements
and calculations by hand and then I can put it into Moray where I don't have as good
of control or
enter the values directly in the SDL. There are times I will use it if simply playing
with ideas, but I don't
personally consider it to be the best way to do much of anything. The two things it
has going for it are
support of POVRay primatives and direct (if not, do to the slightly difference
cordinate system it uses,
100% compatible) export of POVRay SDL. In most other respects it falls a little short
of the majority of
other programs out there in many ways. I imagine that the nexxt version with 3.5
compatibility will be
an improvement, but in general Moray has been continuously behind the curve of even
POVRay
itself, which is a little annoying, since I would really like to be able to really use
the  program. For most
uses it is fairly good, but it does have flaws and several of those have been stated
as 'never to be
fixed', like the goofy non-POVRay coordinate system that makes the normal SDL and
Moray exported ones
completely inconsistant. This is unfortunately the price we pay for not having a
'integrated' editor with
POVRay and no huge company developing it, but it shouldn't have to be. There is a
point where
having one special tool to build the main model, one to do nurbs, one for organics,
one for splines,
etc., etc., etc. starts to produce more frustration than benefit, especially if you
can't find half the
bloody tools. ;) lol

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