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STL File Viewing

github.com

41–50 of 66 posts

Re: STL File Viewing

#41
post #11

Yo github... while you're bothering, here are some other things that would be handy: * Visual STL diffs, maybe by coloring deleted/added triangles. Possibly with a viewer on gh-pages or on the /:username/:reponame/commits/:branchname endpoint? * DXF sucks, but yeah DXF rendering. * Maybe consider thingiview.js (which does not use WebGL) or possibly a WebGL equivalent viewer. Controlled rotation, zooming, camera repos…

Wow. That's a stupidly large amount of work, barfed out with seeming ignorance to the cost of implementation.

> Wow. That's a stupidly large amount of work, barfed out with seeming ignorance to the cost of implementation.

Actually, I implemented a lot of this on a private project in 2010-2011 that I never launched. There are a lot of other competitors trying to be "GitHub for Hardware"- but a lot of them fail to bother to implement git support. I think it's great that GitHub is moving in this direction.

Re: STL File Viewing

#42
post #11

Yo github... while you're bothering, here are some other things that would be handy: * Visual STL diffs, maybe by coloring deleted/added triangles. Possibly with a viewer on gh-pages or on the /:username/:reponame/commits/:branchname endpoint? * DXF sucks, but yeah DXF rendering. * Maybe consider thingiview.js (which does not use WebGL) or possibly a WebGL equivalent viewer. Controlled rotation, zooming, camera repos…

LOL you talk about such features as if they're simple add-ons! Each is a huuuuge commitment from dev to maintenance. But yea, it'd be nice. GrabCAD is about as close to this as you get as far as implementing solid CAD stuff.

> LOL you talk about such features as if they're simple add-ons! Each is a huuuuge commitment from dev to maintenance.

Nick, you and I have met, we've talked about this before. I'm really surprised that you think that I think they are simple add-ons. We've talked for hours about these things, how the heck could you get that impression from me!

Re: STL File Viewing

#43
post #11

Yo github... while you're bothering, here are some other things that would be handy: * Visual STL diffs, maybe by coloring deleted/added triangles. Possibly with a viewer on gh-pages or on the /:username/:reponame/commits/:branchname endpoint? * DXF sucks, but yeah DXF rendering. * Maybe consider thingiview.js (which does not use WebGL) or possibly a WebGL equivalent viewer. Controlled rotation, zooming, camera repos…

Somewhat serious: why not apply for a job at Github?

> Somewhat serious: why not apply for a job at Github?

Feel free to send me an offer :)

https://github.com/kanzure

kanzure@gmail.com

Re: STL File Viewing

#44
post #11

Yo github... while you're bothering, here are some other things that would be handy: * Visual STL diffs, maybe by coloring deleted/added triangles. Possibly with a viewer on gh-pages or on the /:username/:reponame/commits/:branchname endpoint? * DXF sucks, but yeah DXF rendering. * Maybe consider thingiview.js (which does not use WebGL) or possibly a WebGL equivalent viewer. Controlled rotation, zooming, camera repos…

Github is not going to support backend rendering of 3d files.

Seems like the smart thing would be pushing rendering to the client. This is already done in real-time for coarse and simple models like PDB.

Re: STL File Viewing

#45
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github is not going to support backend rendering of 3d files.

Seems like the smart thing would be pushing rendering to the client. This is already done in real-time for coarse and simple models like PDB.

> smart thing would be pushing rendering to the client

They seem to be doing precisely that:

"This viewer is powered by Three.js and uses WebGL when available, but will fall back to the slower canvas renderer."

Re: STL File Viewing

#46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

LOL you talk about such features as if they're simple add-ons! Each is a huuuuge commitment from dev to maintenance. But yea, it'd be nice. GrabCAD is about as close to this as you get as far as implementing solid CAD stuff.

The maintenance commitment cannot be understated. If you add some kind of processing to a file format, people are going to expect it to always be there, and always work, so you're taking on an eternal renderer maintenance workload. That said, we'd love to cleverly render all sorts of formats. The limitation is the time and developer energy to do it right and keep it updated.

Why not allow third parties to develop plugins, if you don't want to maintain the feature yourself?

Re: STL File Viewing

#47
post #22

Cool, it works pretty well. Next step: support Wavefront's .OBJ files.

Implementations would no doubt be similar, but here they are targeting hardware/manufacturing, not gaming/graphics.

You wrote this comment in multiple places, but it's wrong. All 3D printing services I am aware of accept OBJ. Many printer softwares accept it. In fact, as soon as you want to print in color, you have to move away from STL and OBJ would be a good choice.

Re: STL File Viewing

#48
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. That's a stupidly large amount of work, barfed out with seeming ignorance to the cost of implementation.

> Wow. That's a stupidly large amount of work, barfed out with seeming ignorance to the cost of implementation. Actually, I implemented a lot of this on a private project in 2010-2011 that I never launched. There are a lot of other competitors trying to be "GitHub for Hardware"- but a lot of them fail to bother to implement git support. I think it's great that GitHub is moving in this direction.

Ah, cool. I was in the CAD space for a while, so your list made me twitch a bit. :)

Is your project open-source?

Re: STL File Viewing

#49
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wow. That's a stupidly large amount of work, barfed out with seeming ignorance to the cost of implementation. Actually, I implemented a lot of this on a private project in 2010-2011 that I never launched. There are a lot of other competitors trying to be "GitHub for Hardware"- but a lot of them fail to bother to implement git support. I think it's great that GitHub is moving in this direction.

Ah, cool. I was in the CAD space for a while, so your list made me twitch a bit. :) Is your project open-source?

No, sorry. But the commit hook in the other post should be useful in terms of openscad file rendering..

CAD is a really interesting industry from an open source perspective. BRLCAD has done some really excellent work. "Something" needs to come in and bulldoze the mess that OpenCASCADE has left. It turns out that writing NURBS intersection code is really not a cake walk.. go figure. Not sure what that "something" is going to be yet.

Btw, I would love to talk with you about your industry experience. We could mutually complain about how terrible ISO 10303 is!

Re: STL File Viewing

#50
post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, cool. I was in the CAD space for a while, so your list made me twitch a bit. :) Is your project open-source?

No, sorry. But the commit hook in the other post should be useful in terms of openscad file rendering.. CAD is a really interesting industry from an open source perspective. BRLCAD has done some really excellent work. "Something" needs to come in and bulldoze the mess that OpenCASCADE has left. It turns out that writing NURBS intersection code is really not a cake walk.. go figure. Not sure what that "something" is g…

Sure. I wasn't in for a super long time, but worked on space-planning and other AEC software. Shoot me an email and we'll take it from there.
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