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µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

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Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#41

Post by hantusk »

pedropaulovc wrote: post #22

I've been using zoo and its KCL language with some success for boundary-representation CAD writing. If I understood correctly, µcad serves the same purpose. Comparing code samples between both of them, I personally enjoy KCL's pipelined approach more. My main beef with zoo is the fact that they are promoting vendor lock-in by forcing users to use their cloud-hosted geometry kernel with absolutely no local alternative…

Lego brick in build123d: https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/tutorial_lego.htm...

Gear in build123d: https://github.com/GarryBGoode/gggears

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#42

Post by marcosscriven »

don-bright wrote: post #16
aclindsa wrote: post #10

One of the best things about openscad is the ability to immediately see the results of a code change in the 3D view (all I do is save the file with :w in neovim and openscad re-renders it). Being able to interact like this makes it much quicker and easier to iterate on a design. I read through the ucad website and book for 10 minutes and haven't been able to figure out if there is an analogue to this for ucad? There…

That immediacy is mostly thanks to OpenCSG which is essentially a magic trick to quickly fake 3d rendering of booleans between 3d objects using stencil buffer of gpu. http://opencsg.org/ In other words it renders the cylinders cubes spheres etc and their unions differences etc, to a 2d screen without actually calculating the intersection of those meshes / solids in 3d space. This is the special thing about OpenSCAD d…

I didn’t know they’d added an alternative kernel. The CGAL one used arbitrary precision which massively slowed it down.

Also, fillets are made using the Minkowski operation, which is super slow.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#43

Post by constantcrying »

raddan wrote: post #6
actinium226 wrote: post #2

This is a neat idea and I quite like some of the syntax, but what is this for? I have a hard time seeing this gaining traction over traditional sketch-based CAD for a number of reasons, so is it just meant to be a toy?

I would personally prefer to work with a language-based CAD than a strictly graphical one. Especially for parametric kinds of objects. Now that 3D printing is going mainstream, I am certain that new and interesting things are still to come in CAD.

Neither is 3D printing going mainstream nor do I see any reason why it would push people away from industry standard CAD software.

CAD is already complex. Why would giving those people an extremely underpowered programming language, which makes creating even the simplest 3D models a chore, cause change in the CAD world.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#44

Post by imtringued »

awinter-py wrote: post #11

Tried openscad and then cadquery for some geometry iteration projects and found them clunky. It wasn't just that I was missing a UI; the functions, constraints and geometry kernel weren't as powerful as onshape, which I've used a bit, and presumably light years behind fusion 360, which I haven't used. Even freecad, a UI-based oss cad, is not quite ergonomic for a beginner-to-intermediate user, though it has come a lo…

As someone who has been using FreeCAD starting in 2020, I can't tell any major differences. The problems are the same they have ever been. It's only the renderer that got a little bit more "sexy", but that is just looks.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#45

Post by adastra22 »

fallat wrote: post #31
pedropaulovc wrote: post #22

I've been using zoo and its KCL language with some success for boundary-representation CAD writing. If I understood correctly, µcad serves the same purpose. Comparing code samples between both of them, I personally enjoy KCL's pipelined approach more. My main beef with zoo is the fact that they are promoting vendor lock-in by forcing users to use their cloud-hosted geometry kernel with absolutely no local alternative…

Zoo has said it's open to local hosting of the kernel for years. I believe it's a matter of time because it's mostly about legal tape. ucad is based on Manifold, so unfortunately, not really comparable, since it's all meshes vs brep, like OpenSCAD. Note KCL could be completely augmented with another kernel. There are people who've already tried :)

Don't they use their own kernel? What legal tape?

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#46

Post by fainpul »

krisoft wrote: post #13
raddan wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would personally prefer to work with a language-based CAD than a strictly graphical one. Especially for parametric kinds of objects. Now that 3D printing is going mainstream, I am certain that new and interesting things are still to come in CAD.

Curious. How much experience do you have with any form of CAD? Is the preference based on that you tried graphical CAD software and you found them lacking, or is it based on imagining how they might work? Last week at the hackspace someone asked me to quickly design a manifold which holds together a scuba mouth piece, a 48mm diameter valve and a nato 40mm screw fitting. They wanted to minimise the internal tidal volu…

I've also been asking myself what people do with programmatic CAD. I've used OpenSCAD once to create a simple, cylindrical object, but about 80% of the things I create (using conventional CAD, like Fusion 360) would be way too complex for that. And even the simplest shapes are just much faster to create and modify in Fusion.

Maybe this is the "everything looks like a nail" problem for programmers who have never tried CAD?

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#47

Post by willvarfar »

I've been searching for a CAD language that supports iteration in a good way. I've been designing a self-build house and it occurs to me that, once I have the walls etc, filling in the details for the manufacture of those walls could be done by a programming routine. Such a routine could work out how many studs are needed and their placement etc and generate the kind of cut-throughs where you can see the construction inside the wall that you sometimes see in construction books. Anyway, without for-loops that kind of thing is really difficult and I've given up.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#49

Post by nakedneuron »

willvarfar wrote: post #47

I've been searching for a CAD language that supports iteration in a good way. I've been designing a self-build house and it occurs to me that, once I have the walls etc, filling in the details for the manufacture of those walls could be done by a programming routine. Such a routine could work out how many studs are needed and their placement etc and generate the kind of cut-throughs where you can see the construction…

Then build123d might be for you.

Re: µcad: New open source programming language that can generate 2D sketches and 3D

#50

Post by [deleted] »

nakedneuron wrote: post #49
willvarfar wrote: post #47

I've been searching for a CAD language that supports iteration in a good way. I've been designing a self-build house and it occurs to me that, once I have the walls etc, filling in the details for the manufacture of those walls could be done by a programming routine. Such a routine could work out how many studs are needed and their placement etc and generate the kind of cut-throughs where you can see the construction…

Then build123d might be for you.

[deleted]
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