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Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

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121–130 of 135 posts

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#121
post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, and then ran away to Switzerland rather than work to preserve the democracy which made his fortune possible.

Is this critique or praise of his character? ;-)

Statement of fact with my interpretation --- folks should verify the fact and read what he has written and come to their own conclusions.

While I'm grateful Autodesk stepped in and kept TinkerCAD afloat, I'm relieved Sketchbook escaped their clutches, and am glad I never got involved in Fusion 360 so as to suffer from their on-going "rug pulls" --- which of these are a result of his influence, I've not found a need to discern.

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>corners where 3 fillets meet I would imagine there are a few different possible options (preferably a settable parameter): * Intersection. Conceptually the simplest, the chamfers would just be joined by the solid addition of all three fillet surfaces, creating three new sharp corner edges that meet at a single vertex. * Rolling sphere. Imagine an idealized spherical "thumb" smoothing out caulk. The middle would be j…

That’s not even the complex part. Most of what you describe is a user interface issue, not a geometric kernel issue. The hard part of 3 corners fillets is the tolerances. Each of those fillet operations has its own compounding float errors and when they meet, the intersection is so messy that they often do not intersect at all. This breaks almost every downstream algorithm because they depend on point classification…

when i did openscad, i just did a minowski hull with a 4sided bipyramid (aka rotated cube) to get chamfers for my cubes.

bonus: minowski hull with a round pyramid adds chamfers in the vertical and fillets in the horizontal, which is what i want for 3d printing most of the time. additionally it closes small overhangs, and it makes fonts smoother (i.e. fonts don't extrude in a 90degree angle, and get 45degree instead, and print better on vertical faces)

disclaimer: I havent used openscad for about a year and my memory may be fuzzy

edit: i am not saying minowsky hull would directly solve your problem, but maybe the algorithm gives you inspiration to solve your numerical issues

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#123
post #82

Ahh, but can it do a clean self-reversing diamond thread including the reversing portion? See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47580583

Had to Google this one :-) Since SolveSpace has a helix tool that can "extrude" any sketch along a helix it should be doable.

After looking at some videos of what this even is, I'd say it can do it but will likely fail on the boolean operation where the two spirals intersect. It might work fine but it's an operation likely to trigger a bug, and it would be sensitive to the exact placement/pitch of everything. Having said that, using the "force to triangle mesh" option solvespace will probably work fine. That should be sufficient for the home 3D printing crowd to make some fun stuff, but you won't be able to save a STEP file then. Just my guess as to how this might go.

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Plasticity guy seems to be threading that needle.

That might seem to be the case, right up until he gets taken to court over it. Never presume that a thing is legal (or will not later be punished) on the basis that someone is already doing it.

You can't stop it. This is just progress.

All software that isn't delivered over client/server to thin clients is now subject to being trivially cloned.

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#125
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to Google this one :-) Since SolveSpace has a helix tool that can "extrude" any sketch along a helix it should be doable.

After looking at some videos of what this even is, I'd say it can do it but will likely fail on the boolean operation where the two spirals intersect. It might work fine but it's an operation likely to trigger a bug, and it would be sensitive to the exact placement/pitch of everything. Having said that, using the "force to triangle mesh" option solvespace will probably work fine. That should be sufficient for the hom…

Thanks for sharing your insight.

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#126
One more fun fact:

SolveSpace officially is supported on Windows (Vista-11), Linux and macOS, and compiles with Emscripten and runs in a browser.

However with a little effort it also compiles for and runs on Windows 2000.

https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1036#issueco...

So it runs on all the majour platforms from the last 26 years (excluding MacOS 9).

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#127
One more fun fact:

SolveSpace officially is supported on Windows (Vista-11), Linux and macOS, and compiles with Emscripten and runs in a browser.

However with a little effort it also compiles for and runs on Windows 2000.

https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/1036#issueco...

So it runs on all the majour platforms from the last 26 years (excluding MacOS 9).

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#128
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The last Autodesk software I've used was AutoCAD 2000 (released in 1999). And I've not followed them since. Perhaps they have indeed become "one of the worst corp. in the world of software", but in the early years they were very interesting. The founder of Autodesk, John Walker (he died in 2024) wrote/edited and interesting book on the early years: "The Autodesk File" https://fourmilab.ch/autofile/

Yeah, and then ran away to Switzerland rather than work to preserve the democracy which made his fortune possible.

By the way this creation of his, from July 1990: https://www.fourmilab.ch/evilempire/ is very relevant here, but we are getting off-topic :-)

SpeakFreely was his as well - a very early encrypted, VoIP app.

And this: https://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/ ... As I said - an interesting person :-)

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#129
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not even the complex part. Most of what you describe is a user interface issue, not a geometric kernel issue. The hard part of 3 corners fillets is the tolerances. Each of those fillet operations has its own compounding float errors and when they meet, the intersection is so messy that they often do not intersect at all. This breaks almost every downstream algorithm because they depend on point classification…

when i did openscad, i just did a minowski hull with a 4sided bipyramid (aka rotated cube) to get chamfers for my cubes. bonus: minowski hull with a round pyramid adds chamfers in the vertical and fillets in the horizontal, which is what i want for 3d printing most of the time. additionally it closes small overhangs, and it makes fonts smoother (i.e. fonts don't extrude in a 90degree angle, and get 45degree instead,…

OpenSCAD is mesh based so it's not even in the same universe as a proper brep geometric kernel. Everything is easier when you give up on the math entirely, but that’s not good enough for real world manufacturing and simulation.

All of the major commercial geometric kernels have been working on these problems for thirty years and I’m sorry, but your five minutes experience with a glorified tessellator isn’t going to make progress on long standing computational geometry problems.

Re: Open source CAD in the browser (Solvespace)

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That might seem to be the case, right up until he gets taken to court over it. Never presume that a thing is legal (or will not later be punished) on the basis that someone is already doing it.

You can't stop it. This is just progress. All software that isn't delivered over client/server to thin clients is now subject to being trivially cloned.

That was never in question, even before AI. It just took more monkeys at typewriters.
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