New Feature: Multi-Mirror

EvanReese

I get where you're coming from. I liked the new planes approach for being more flexible (they don't have to be perpendicular), but I do get the tradeoff with the mate connectors. I am considering adding an enum to choose the input style so you can do either way and make the mode sticky so everyone gets what they want. @eric_pesty @S1mon @jelte_steur_info would that do what you want?

S1mon

Enum UI choices could work, but it seems like added complexity.

I'm curious if @jelte_steur_info and @eric_pesty would be happy with my proposal for a single MC selection (defaulting to the origin) with XYZ toggles? Is there value in the plane selections potentially being non-orthogonal?

The reality is that with mirroring in part studios I typically end up with a separate left/right mirror and a front/back mirror because inevitably there are some things which don't get mirrored in both directions so I need them to be independent. I've never actually used multi-mirror in a real project, but the behavior I'm suggesting is similar to the mirror tool in some other CAD systems. You get a default at the origin - with an optional selection for a different reference location - and toggles for XYZ.

One option that's missing from this mirror tool that's in Plasticity is to split the input part(s) along the mirror plane before mirroring. This requires flip input(s) to select which side of the mirror plane(s) are kept vs removed.

EvanReese

@S1mon What you're describing was already the default behavior before. It would default to world coordinates, but could use a mate connector instead. As to whether non-orthogonal mirroring would be useful, I'm not really sure. I could see it being handy for making the pie slice of a pattern before a radial pattern. In any case I do value creating flexibility where it isn't too costly, even if I can't predict all use-cases. This one falls within that threshold for me personally. @jelte_steur_info do you have some scenarios to share where the individual planes are a clear winner for you?

eric_pesty

I looked at it a bit more, I had missed the default 3 planes default behavior. This does help but but it is setup requiring the first box to be populated so it's quite a few more clicks if you don't want to mirror along the right plane.

Another big change is the removal of the behavior that adds the transformed part to their seed only, which was another reason to use this instead of the regular mirror to avoid creating a single solid when mirroring multiple touching parts at once. I.e. the "multi" applying to multiple parts mirrored along a single (or several) direction at once.

eric_pesty

@EvanReese,
An enum seems like a great way to handle this:

• XYZ boxes about origin/MC for quick orthogonal mirrors
• OR "specify individual mirror directions". For me, the option for non-orthogonal planes seems like a pretty niche use case (where I would be fine just using separate standard mirrors, or even separate multi-mirror features for that matter) but others might find it useful…

The biggest thing would be bringing back the "merge to seeds" behavior. I guess that would be a new tab at the top (between "New" and "Add"), or maybe an additional check box/option near the "Merge with all".

EvanReese

@eric_pesty Merge only to seed was one of the main points of the feature, so I agree there. I thought I tested that on this one, but in hindsight I think I tested on surfaces only so missed that it was changed. I'm going to revert it for now, but I'd like to hear from Jelte on use-cases he's imagining.