Moment of Inspiration - Over 220 Licenses Purchased By YouthQuest Since 2013

As a not-for-profit, we have to account for all of our assets and purchases.  It's my job to purchase Moment of Inspiration licenses used by our 3D ThinkLink Lab, training sites, mentors and teachers.  As I purchased the first licenses for 2018, it dawned on me that since 2013 we have purchased over 220 licenses for our 3D ThinkLink Lab initiative.  

PURCHASED... not Free.

Two events, today,  prompted me to write this post.  The first, as I related was the purchase of 6 more MOI3D licenses.  The second was an email from a Cubify Design user asking me how to accomplish a task which had him stumped.  I had created some Cubify Invent/Design tutorials many years ago that had introduced him to the product and though he had become very proficient, he still ran in a wall on the task he was trying to accomplish.

I wasn't a lot of help to him, since I'd long ago switched to MOI3D.  But, I decided to see how long it would take me to accomplish his task in MOI3D.  It took just under 4 minutes from scratch.  The actual task took little more than 15 seconds.  The rest of the time was building the base models with which to test the task operation.

Why Not Switch to Free?

We all know the expression, "Put your money where your mouth is" and we have done just that.  We have evaluated every free 3D design application we come across.  And yet, we stick with Moment of Inspiration.  There are several reasons:

• Intuitive Workflow
• Very Quick and Easy to Learn
• Very Powerful
• Very Fast Design Times 

Intuitive Workflow

Sites using YouthQuests' 3D Thinklink Lab curriculum teach at-risk young people of a wide range of ages and very short attention spans.  We need an interface that very quickly gets out of the way so the students can get on with design and printing.  The faster they can go from vision to concrete reality the better.  In the hundreds of students we've served, we have not had a single one that could not quickly grasp the interfacc and be designing in no time.  The interface lends itself to our "Noun" and "Verb" approach to learning MOI3D.

Very Quick and Easy to Learn

"Easy" in the context in which we work would be useless if MOI3D weren't also "Quick" to learn.  We have very little time to teaach them.  Consider the following:

• Only the students on the autistic-spectrum at Phillips schools have more than 5 months of instruction in MOI3D.   

•  Youth ChalleNGe sites have two new "Cadet Classes" a year.  So, they have a very limited time (Less than 5 months) to learn 3D design and printing in just 32 sessions. (One session per week with some multi-session Saturdays.)

• A Boy and Girls Club offered 2 weeks of instruction for 3 hours a day to 8 -16 year multicultural students.

• Horizons Hampton Roads teaches student in grade 6-7 in two weeks in their summer school program.

The bottom line is that NO students have more than 32 lessons of MOI3D instruction.  Yet, they are quickly able to accomplish some very complex designs.  This is a design by a female student, having just 2 weeks of lessons (3 hours per day), from Afghanistan that spoke very little English.  Her younger sister, who spoke excellent English, had to translate everything.

Castle created in Two Week Class

It's brilliant.

One of the things that makes this possible is that MOI3D provides instant interactive help via prompts specific to each noun or verb the student is trying to use.  This not only makes it easy to learn; but, allows students to forge ahead fearlessly.  Even though we might not have reached a formal lesson on that function, they can easily walk themselves through it using the prompts to help them.

Very Powerful

Many "free" applications are designed to be easy entry level solutions.  But, quickly become difficult when trying to accomplish complex designs.  MOI3D, on the other hand, is VERY powerful.  Now, I don't believe any of our students (or teachers, including me) have reached this level of sophistication; but, it is a really quick demonstration of how far one can go with using MOI3D.

While we may never reach the level of competence of the person that created the car, as demonstrated in the above video, MOI3D can go as far as we can achieve.  We have plenty of headroom to grow our skills.  And, THAT is well worth the cost.

Very Fast Design Times 

But, perhaps the most compelling reason for sticking with MOI3D is just how fast we can complete 3D printing projects.  Students rarely have more that 45 minutes to hear a lesson, envision a design and finish it for printing.  While the following design won't print all that well on an FDM printer, it does demonstrate  how a very complex looking design can be completed in a very short time.  This design, except for the wrapped text, took under 8 minutes.  The wrapped text was an afterthought to show how easily text can be wrapped in MOI3D.

A Design Completed in Under 8 Minutes on the Fly

I had no idea where I was going when I started the above design, so much of the time was conceptualization.

This is why we stick with Moment of Inspiration, preferring it to any of the "Free" applications we could use.

A 30 trial for MOI3D can be downloaded from:  

http://moi3d.com/download.htm

UPDATED: 2/17/2018

After writing this I ran across a wonderful tutorial on MOI and Nurbs that compares the surfaces created by creating in Nurbs (MOI3D) and Polygons (3DS Max).  Both are great for different types of outcomes.  But, in this case (precision 3D printing) Arrimus 3D demonstrates how precise Nurbs can be.  It's quite interesting.  Most of the time, Arrimus 3D, because he creates game assets, etc. works in 3DS Max or Z-Brush and is terrific.  Visits his YouTube Channel to see some beautiful work.