Snap to lines, to streamline virtual staging & working with 3D objects
  • jasonbeyers
    super8 member
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    Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:16 am

    Snap to lines, to streamline virtual staging & working with 3D objects

    by jasonbeyers » Sun Oct 11, 2020 12:19 am

    It would be great if the "Snap to objects" feature worked for line surface endpoints/vertices, like it does for quad endpoints. Since some projects may have tons of lines, perhaps this line-snapping could be an optional menu item that users can turn on, when appropriate.

    Also nice to have, but less important than line endpoints: optional snapping along the edges of lines and surfaces (boundaries), and for intersections of these edges, like in Fusion 360 and other CAD tools.

    Since snapping does not currently work for lines, I've needed to create "stencils" made out of quads or triangles with zero opacity, to form a structure. I then build surfaces (and lines) around that stencil.

    I've recently needed to construct these kinds of stencils based on 3D objects that I had built in Fusion 360. Doing proper UV mapping within MM has been cumbersome due to the complexity of the 3D objects involved (20+ faces), and while 3D surfaces have a "Create lines from 3D object" option, I still can't quickly create individual surfaces corresponding to 3D objects I import since there is no line snapping. If line snapping was enabled, I could essentially build 3D stencils and use Madmapper as a proper virtual staging tool. Learning Unreal Engine has been a bit daunting for virtual staging and I'd love to do virtual staging within MM instead.

    The flexibility of rotatable and scalable 3D objects within MM, combined with the existing "Create lines" and line snapping, would greatly streamline this workflow. You could import a 3D model of a DJ booth and attach surfaces to the faces (via snapping) to keep the panels independent from eachother. And if the "virtual stage" needs to be moved or rotated, it would be easy to re-align the surfaces to match the new position of the 3D "stencil".

    Or, is there some other way to snap surfaces to the corners of a 3D model within MM?

    Thanks for your consideration!
  • franz
    madMapper master
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    Re: Snap to lines, to streamline virtual staging & working with 3D objects

    by franz » Wed Oct 14, 2020 2:45 pm

    +1
  • jasonbeyers
    super8 member
    Posts: 125
    Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:16 am

    Re: Snap to lines, to streamline virtual staging & working with 3D objects

    by jasonbeyers » Tue Mar 23, 2021 8:01 am

    Another use for this: import SVG lines, then snap surface corners to vertices of the resulting lines.

    I'm working on a geometric projection where I design shapes in Fusion 360, export the DXF file, convert that to SVG, then import into Madmapper. I want to line up my surfaces exactly with the set of lines. I've been manually entering XY coordinates from Fusion 360 (entering them as madmapper XY coordinates) but I'm doing this for more than a hundred points per digital art piece, and it is very tedious. I'm looking for other ways to streamline this while maintaining the precision.

    Snap-to-lines would make the SVG import much more useful and would be a big time saver for projects like this.

    Thanks!
  • jasonbeyers
    super8 member
    Posts: 125
    Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:16 am

    Re: Snap to lines, to streamline virtual staging & working with 3D objects

    by jasonbeyers » Thu Mar 25, 2021 8:12 pm

    Or, if the concern is that line snapping could make some output views cumbersome to use, perhaps there could be a toggle for individual line surfaces to turn on snapping, allowing other things to snap only to those particular line surfaces, and folks could just turn it on when they need it. I suppose a global toggle specific to lines would provide the necessary flexibility, and someone could just turn the whole thing on for brief periods of time.

    Thanks for your consideration!
  • jasonbeyers
    super8 member
    Posts: 125
    Joined: Mon Oct 08, 2018 7:16 am

    Re: Snap to lines, to streamline virtual staging & working with 3D objects

    by jasonbeyers » Tue Feb 08, 2022 12:46 am

    Just pinging this thread, in case the feature is under consideration.

    This would still be a wonderful time-saver and would streamline workflows using Adobe Illustrator / CAD tools to generate SVG designs, then loading them into madmapper to snap quad/triangle corners to the design.

    Thanks!

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