Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
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Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#2I couldn't agree more with this. I have actually been looking at writing a CAM program that uses OpenSCAD (and perhaps the python bindings to it) in order to generate gcode for machining. It would work great for me, but probably less so for the guys in the shop.
Representing the OpenSCAD code as a tree you can fairly readily edit next to the renderer would help. Being able to click on something and have it pull up all the relevant nodes regarding that element for editing would be a huge help. Then of course the next step is being able to drag and get context menus for things like bolt circles or other kinds of symmetry.
FreeCAD doesn't really cut it when it comes to trying to do these kinds of things, in my opinion.
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#3I am confused about the title. What is "Area"?
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#4I am confused about the title. What is "Area"?
It's a riff on a common type of onion headline: e.g: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-experimented-with-...
(which itself, is a takeoff on thousands of "Area man/woman does X" type headlines in local newspapers everywhere.)
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#5I am confused about the title. What is "Area"?
It looks like a riff off of a common Onion news article headline pattern. Looking at their homepage now, I see these:
"Area Man Experimented With Sex Back In College"
"Lunch Barely Misses Area Man's Vital Organs"
"Area Facebook User Incredibly Stupid"
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#6I couldn't agree more with this. I have actually been looking at writing a CAM program that uses OpenSCAD (and perhaps the python bindings to it) in order to generate gcode for machining. It would work great for me, but probably less so for the guys in the shop. Representing the OpenSCAD code as a tree you can fairly readily edit next to the renderer would help. Being able to click on something and have it pull up al…
Seems like there would be a lot of distance between an openscad model and generating a toolpath in gcode.
I currently use MeshCAM for this and have thought about writing something several times (usually while fuming.)
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#7I am confused about the title. What is "Area"?
It's a riff on a common type of onion headline: e.g: http://www.theonion.com/articles/area-man-experimented-with-... (which itself, is a takeoff on thousands of "Area man/woman does X" type headlines in local newspapers everywhere.)
Thanks.
HN Reader Lament^s ^That Authors Don't Follow Basic Rules of Grammar
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#8It lends itself to a workflow where sometimes, a user checks out a file, and forgets to unlock it. Or goes on vacation. Then you have to forcibly check out the file your coworker locked to get work done. And when he has to merge his changes with yours again, it’s a gigantic hassle.
This exactly describes web development on the Microsoft stack using Visual Source Safe. I don't know if that product exists anymore or still works the same way but the frustration with it is what drove the popularity of Subversion and then later Git.
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#9Many years ago, when I was designing a part in AutoCad, I drew it by hand and then back-converted the drawing into parametrized AutoLISP, which I then stored under version control (RCS at the time).
It'd be nice to have tools that make this easy. Though I'm honestly surprised more people don't do it anyhow.
Re: Area programmer laments designers don’t use the same tools he does
#10> They are also not on github, which makes collaboration that much harder.
This is now vim-emacs level zealotry. There are workflows which gasp do not mesh well with github. github issues/PRs have almost no metadata and absolutely none that the issue submitter can set.