Moving objects without losing history.

[Anonymous]

How can I move surfaces which I have made out of curves? There are times when I want to rotate or move group of surfaces together and I have to delete the construction history and save the file with a different name or something.. how can i avoid this ?

Is there a mode in which I can move surfaces, and when I come out of that mode the surfaces come back to there constrained (history) position ?

Thanks guys..

[digiformer]

Not that i know.

You would have to move the curves. Then the surface will follow.

Only way i know is to make an instance copy and move that using "pick object" and "move".
This way the surface you move will be still connected to the history...uhm...but instances are a bit touchy...

Greetings
Tobias

[Anonymous]

If I am only moving, then moving the curves is alright, even though that is a pain too. But if I have to rotate several surfaces on a single pivot, then even relocating the pivot point deletes the history... so rotating is no no ..

How do you use the animation feature in Alias then ? Do you have to delete the construction history before animating?

Thanks,
Sahil.

[anand_joshi]

Hi Sahil,

For animation, you usually do not need construction history. So people delete all unnecessary things for animation like construction history, curves, templated geometry etc. when they animate.

Do you have any situation where you need to keep history while animating ?

[Anonymous]

Hey Anand,

I don't really need to animate. But there are times I want to rotate a bunch of surfaces made out of rails and fillets, on a single pivot. I usually have to create a copy of those surfaces in a new layer and the delete the history and then rotate or move.

So I just wanted to know if I can skip all the copy and create a new layer work around, and simply transform heavy surfaces without losing history, is there a way I can ?


I tried the 'Global suspend' feature, but it didnt help, What is global suspend actually ?

[tekbot]

The history you are loosing is most likely from input curves.
-If you have 2 patches connected with curves to create say, a birail surface, and you want to rotate those surfaces. Then only translate the 2 main patches and the curves and the birail will up date automatically without loosing history.

when you start moving groups of surfaces, you start running into the limits of construction history or your memory of all the other operations like projections and trims. Alias is not like a Node based history system like Maya, which allows you to move surfaces seperate from the curves without loosing the history.

The history however is lightyears beyond what other surfacing software's named after animals offers. thank god you dont have to rebuild every thing.

GLOBAL SUSPEND.> love this feature. lets say that you need to modify a curve but you dont want to wait for the software to update after each move. click on the "H" near the snap tools and a drop down will appear... select > "global suspend" . NOW, you can move the curves freely and the surface will not update until you on check global suspend. cool when you are modifing surfaces that have other features built off of it.