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

microcad.xyz

81–90 of 139 posts

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

#81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

They added it in the dev branch. There hasn't been a stable release since 2021 and there has been a lot of ongoing development in the meantime, many people use the development release since it's significantly faster.

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

#82
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's incorrect, then! Lots changed since 2020 in the current 1.0.2 release, including TNP mitigations and the core assembly workbench. The 1.1 developer release (which is stable and useful and getting quite close to final release) contains further TNP mitigations; further improvements to the core assembly workbench; radically better lighting; datums have moved into the core; there's a way of enabling the advanced att…

I agree with this. Per my comment just above, I've been one of the HNers recommending against FreeCAD for years, because that was my experience. I've recently started to change that opinion; using the build I linked above, it's now pretty usable and competitive/usable for a hobbyist. I'm now considering it my first-line CAD package (until proven otherwise!)

Hm, I may have to reconsider the amoral recommendation of pirate SOLIDWORKS

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

#83
post #32

Looks like a promising alternative to OpenSCAD. Although am I the only one to notice the swastika in their logo?

If you look hard enough almost any 4 way rotation symmetry will result in a variation of swastika like shape. You would have to almost completely ban 4 way rotation symmetry to avoid it.

I personally find it unhealthy to actively search, extend and strengthen the association of hate symbols based on vague similarity out of context. Sure remember the crimes they have done and avoid the exact specific shape, proportions, color commonly used by the hate groups, but also take context into account. Don't promote them by giving them credit for things they didn't do. Don't let the hate groups win by allowing few dozen years of years of activity destroy thousands of years of cultural and language history and future for wide category of symbols and simplest geometric patterns. Don't erase words from common language. Don't let them make your life worse by self inflicted excessive censorship. Grow the good associations not the bad ones, dilute and take away the strength from hate groups instead of letting them take away common language from you. If you look at thousand year old budhist or ancient greek stone carving which uses one of the few dozen swastika variations and think those time traveling Nazis plastering their symbols all over the place they win.

When looking at children playing with paper pinwheel, is your first thought also they must be Nazi? When you look at cardboard box with 4 flaps overlapped on top of each other do you think Nazi?

With regards to other people speculation how this happened I doubt they intentionally tried to create a swastika, it just happens naturally when you use rotational symmetry. Looking at this logo I personally see the overall cross and spinning shape formed by positive space first. The image of swastika formed by negative space is kind of weak and clunky due to thickness mismatch created by curved rhombus. If they had used 4 overlapping squares or circles it would be more problematic, at that point a logo designer would likely stop and try to mixup things to get rid of it.

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

#84
post #70
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you see a swastika there, do you also see it in the Python logo?

Personally I would not have seen a swastika here, but when looking for it, here it would be more obvious, the python logo has only half of it. Still, questionable if it was intentional .. and if it was, does not necesarrily mean they are Nazis (they did not invent, but just used the old symbol). Also this project was funded in part by the german Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space and they are not know…

Python logo actually has 3/4 of swastika. It's only one the vertical line that is missing.

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

#86
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're talking about CAD in general I can see your point. For FreeCAD specifically, there looks to be an OpenSCAD import process directly. I don't have experience with how it works, but that may be better than going through STL

I know the process is there, but I really, really doubt it does anything else than just uses OpenSCAD code to render the mesh, as FreeCAD can also deal with meshes. I think it would be pretty unlikely that the FreeCAD devs would have implemented such a rendering system based on OpenSCAD.

From my quick tests, it seems to rebuild the OpenSCAD objects using FreeCAD part workbench primitives.

But I also quite quickly found examples that don't work. I don't know if that's the import not being very good, me finding weird examples, needing to install more libraries, or PEBKAC.

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

#88
You should remove any reference to LEGO from the website and the examples. LEGO is extremely protective of its brand (similar to / worse than Nintendo) and does not want third parties using its name, because it is concerned that LEGO could become a generic term which could put its trademark at risk.

See: "Lego sues Dutch firm over anti-terror blocks using name and shape" https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/lego-sues-dutc... ( http://archive.today/q5XrX )

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

#89
post #31

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 :)

I asked sometime in 2024 and I got a pretty clear response that local/self hosting is not planned.
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