31–40 of 47 posts
Add in a REPL server so that I can make cool designs from Emacs and I'm sold. I'm a big Guile fan so this is a very exciting project for me.
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2016-06/msg0004...
Ao's author here – I'd be glad to answer questions.
Your projects are really impressive! Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you developed a proficiency with graphics programming?
Implementing interesting algorithms is a good way to get a feel for the problem space, and it drags a bunch of the UI/UX considerations along with it – once you've created the crux of a particular tool, how do you expose it to a user (or just yourself while testing) in a way that makes sense?
Nobody ever listens to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12033059 I don't get it, has he given up on Guile or not: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2016-06/msg0002... http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-user/2016-06/msg0002...
Guile works fine for Ao – it's clean and simple, plays nice with C FFI, and has a good REPL.
Racket was lower-impedance for the project discussed in that thread (and certainly has better documentation), but seems a bit heavy-weight for embedded use.
Does Ao compute a mesh from scheme instructionz? or it is a trick? Basically can you dump the code that generates the things in a format that is efficient for a real time application? Oh! And thanks for using GNU Guile Scheme :)
It's a similar idea: scripting behind cad.
[0] - http://www.openscad.org/
Ao's author here – I'd be glad to answer questions.
I've wanted to get into doing some ME stuff but I can never get past how "made by engineers, for engineers" CAD software is.
Ao's author here – I'd be glad to answer questions.
Please please please tell me that you intend on either keeping that project alive or moving it's features into Ao. This is the first CAD software I can understand.
It not only combines the logical ordering I have grown to love as a programmer but the instant feedback of playing with legos. It's the only way I can describe it.
You've blown my mind completely tonight. I've stayed up 5hr after when I like to hit the hay just to play around with this software and am I amazed.
Really hope to hear back on this.
Ao's author here – I'd be glad to answer questions.
Long time 3D/CAD Schemer/Lisper here. I've tried OpenSCAD, programming FreeCAD in Python, Blender3D, and others. AutoLISP was OK as long as you had AutoCAD. Creating parametric shapes in Blender3D in the mid-2000s was cool.
I had used SDRC's IDEAS and AutoDesk Inventor for work, but I was always looking for a more programmatic way of doing things, since sometimes the concepts were more 'organic'. Tools like Rhino at the time were grabbing some of that market, and they had scripting. I dug into Open Cascade a bit, but I am not as skilled as you are, and I got lost in their link to analysis tooling too.
I think the term computational design is a good one. The same way I think computational intelligence is better than the artificial intelligence moniker.
This project, Rosetta, seemed interesting in using Racket to bring a general CAD programming language to work as a Front end for various CAD systems - Rhino, AutoCAD and future ones [1] [2 PDF].
I will be following you closely, since I think your other projects are cool too!
[1] http://web.ist.utl.pt/antonio.menezes.leitao/Rosetta/tutoria...
[2 PDF] http://papers.cumincad.org/data/works/att/acadia11_196.conte...
Finally something that looks like it could replace the horribleness that is openscad.
What's so bad about openscad? I haven't really worked with it, so I'm kind of curious.