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Curated Code CAD (2020)

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Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#31

Post by dTal »

regularfry wrote: post #21
ur-whale wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I've tried to digest the Freecad UI / worflow many times, it's just horrible.

There's definitely room for a UI remix that just embeds a couple of critical workbenches for specific workflows. I use it for designing things for 3d printing, and I spend all of my time in 3 workbenches, maybe 4 if I'm doing something unusual. There's a lot of UI/UX noise I don't need to care about.

There is, it's called SALOME. I've found it to be more intuitive than FreeCAD and they share a lot of code. Blows my mind that it's not more widely known. Bad marketing I guess - it's billed as a CFD preprocessor.

https://www.salome-platform.org/

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#32

Post by dTal »

ur-whale wrote: post #28
regularfry wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's definitely room for a UI remix that just embeds a couple of critical workbenches for specific workflows. I use it for designing things for 3d printing, and I spend all of my time in 3 workbenches, maybe 4 if I'm doing something unusual. There's a lot of UI/UX noise I don't need to care about.

I'm curious: have you found a way to export your models to a mesh file format (eg obj) with some amount of control tessellation? Last I tried, I didn't manage to find the control. I assume it exists, but the UI was simply to painful to navigate.

I mention SALOME above - it's a bit of a sister project to FreeCAD, and it has extensive mesh generation facilities as part of its role as a CFD pre-processor. I've no doubt you could use this to assert fine control over a surface mesh export.

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#33

Post by dTal »

zimpenfish wrote: post #4
londons_explore wrote: post #2

When I last used OpenSCAD, I found it rather lacking. Basic things like 'hollow this object out, leaving a 3mm shell' are nearly impossible. Anything non-trivial takes minutes or hours to compile, making debugging really hard. Are these newer tools better?

> Basic things like 'hollow this object out, leaving a 3mm shell' are nearly impossible. Yeah, I think that's a consequence of how they're constructing the objects. But things like signed distance fields make that easier* because it'd just be "expand the SDF by 3mm" - https://github.com/fogleman/sdf has `shell` for this. * if you can wrap your head around the math/geometry, I guess

Except that only works when the distance field accurately represents Euclidian distance, which it certainly won't the minute you apply any sort of non-trivial distortion.

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#34

Post by dTal »

irevdev wrote: post #17

Hey, the author here. I'm sure I'm missing some, let me know if you know of any. One project that's not on there and frankly it's too early to list but I'm hopeful for is KittyCAD [1] Getting funding behind one of these projects could go a long way. [1] https://kittycad.io/blog/introducing-kittycad

SALOME: https://www.salome-platform.org/

OpenCASCADE, contraints engine lifted from FreeCAD, Python bindings that map 1:1 with the GUI (like Blender). A criminally underrated tool.

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#35

Post by sfvisser »

Asooka wrote: post #26
sfvisser wrote: post #11

There is an OpenCascade version compiled down to wasm [1] that we're currently using embedded in our own app. Rendering to WebGL is relatively straight-forward and the system as a whole works well. Gives me a lot of power when designing mechanical systems and running simulations on the resulting models. Perf of the CAD kernel on the web is not great, but 'just good enough'. Troubleshooting issues is tricky though. If…

What do you use for running simulations of your mechanical models?

We’re running some custom code to test basic robotic locomotion, we’re not doing anything fancy with material properties or stress testing.

Very basic stuff, but still useful to quickly change your model in code and have your domain specific sims pick up on it automatically.

Additional advantage is the ease of building custom UIs to configure your model and scenes.

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#36

Post by zimpenfish »

dTal wrote: post #33
zimpenfish wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Basic things like 'hollow this object out, leaving a 3mm shell' are nearly impossible. Yeah, I think that's a consequence of how they're constructing the objects. But things like signed distance fields make that easier* because it'd just be "expand the SDF by 3mm" - https://github.com/fogleman/sdf has `shell` for this. * if you can wrap your head around the math/geometry, I guess

Except that only works when the distance field accurately represents Euclidian distance, which it certainly won't the minute you apply any sort of non-trivial distortion.

Do you have examples?

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#37

Post by ur-whale »

Slightly OT:

So after reading this, I went and tried cadquery ... it's really nice, but it is very, very unfortunately tied at the hip with anaconda, which is a monstrosity.

I'm not sure why they would tie such a ball and chain to an otherwise super nice CAD scripting tool.

There is luckily a docker based solution [1] that cleanly lets you wrap and try the whole cancerous thing without it spilling all over your system.

[1] https://github.com/RubenRubens/cq-containers/tree/master/cq-...

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#38

Post by alanbernstein »

irevdev wrote: post #17

Hey, the author here. I'm sure I'm missing some, let me know if you know of any. One project that's not on there and frankly it's too early to list but I'm hopeful for is KittyCAD [1] Getting funding behind one of these projects could go a long way. [1] https://kittycad.io/blog/introducing-kittycad

Just a quick diff between your list and mine, apologies if I missed them or if there is a reason to exclude these:

    - https://github.com/nickc92/ViewSCAD
    - Matt Keeter's stuff (listed here https://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/, including https://github.com/mkeeter/antimony and https://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/ao/, though I see you have libfive)
    - https://solvespace.com/index.pl
    - https://mirmik.github.io/zencad/en/
    - https://github.com/fogleman/sdf
This is from a list entitled "migrate away from OpenSCAD", but somehow I can never manage to do that...

Thanks for this site!

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#39

Post by alanbernstein »

ur-whale wrote: post #37

Slightly OT: So after reading this, I went and tried cadquery ... it's really nice, but it is very, very unfortunately tied at the hip with anaconda, which is a monstrosity. I'm not sure why they would tie such a ball and chain to an otherwise super nice CAD scripting tool. There is luckily a docker based solution [1] that cleanly lets you wrap and try the whole cancerous thing without it spilling all over your syste…

I haven't used anaconda, because frankly I assume adding any more python package management tooling will make an even bigger mess on my system, whether it's a good tool or not. But I have no experience with it, so I'm curious, what makes you so opposed to it that you call it a cancer?

Re: Curated Code CAD (2020)

#40

Post by dTal »

zimpenfish wrote: post #36
dTal wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that only works when the distance field accurately represents Euclidian distance, which it certainly won't the minute you apply any sort of non-trivial distortion.

Do you have examples?

Sure. Non-uniform scaling, bends, and twists all render the distance field non-Euclidian.
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