BRL-CAD • Hacker News Board

Re: BRL-CAD

#61

Post by adastra22 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 3:17 PM UTC

threatripper wrote: post #44

linkdink wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak from two types of experience - both a user of CAE and a developer of CAE. There's no money in CAD by itself, meaning just the drawing part. Drafting is a low-value activity often performed by low-value workers who don't write software. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't make software tools for themselves. It's not like when web developers make web development tools, or when machinists make machinist tools.…

Suppose that there would be an open source CAD software that does all the basic things right (like Blender). I agree with you that probably nobody would pay big money for that. That's one reason why it doesn't exist today. But suppose that it exists. Why then would all those "plugin makers" invest in a specific proprietary software when they could extend the open source software instead? Why would users want a propri…

Or, to make a directly relevant parallel, the adoption of Blender. It used to be a niche open source tool whereas any self respecting professional used Maya or 3DS Max, and Adobe products. Now it ate the entire visual effects and video game industries.

Re: BRL-CAD

#62

Post by stew-j » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 3:32 PM UTC

brlcad wrote: post #42

stew-j wrote: post #32

Our company wrote C++ and Ruby wrappers around BRL-CAD a number of years ago for scripted CAD, here is the tutorial for the radio example: https://mirrors.sarata.com/non-gnu/tovero/Tovero_tutorial.pd... We used it for a few small projects. BRL-CAD also has Tcl scripting. We've currently switched to pure Common Lisp and F-rep modeling for scripted CAD. This is the old CL one (again wrapped C++) we are porting: https:/…

That radio tutorial conversion is awesome. Looks like the code is at http://svn.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/tovero/trunk/ ? That's some impressive work, particularly some of the advanced geometry entity mapping going on in there.

Thanks! That is the right repo. If you want to use it, I hold the copyright and we could relicense it.

"My kingdom for a voice" [1] or maybe "My kingdom for a horse" [2] we did post an item about it on the BRL-CAD mailing list. The Common Lisp community didn't really notice Tovero 2.0 for Common Lisp either.

I was actually thinking about trying a Common Lisp wrapper of BRL-CAD, or maybe doing a native CL port.

[1] REM, Document, "King of Birds", 1987 (Anybody know a good marketer?)

[2] Shakespeare, Richard III, Act 5 Scene 4 (a Tovero is a type of horse)

Re: BRL-CAD

#63

Post by linkdink » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 4:35 PM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #61

threatripper wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Suppose that there would be an open source CAD software that does all the basic things right (like Blender). I agree with you that probably nobody would pay big money for that. That's one reason why it doesn't exist today. But suppose that it exists. Why then would all those "plugin makers" invest in a specific proprietary software when they could extend the open source software instead? Why would users want a propri…

Or, to make a directly relevant parallel, the adoption of Blender. It used to be a niche open source tool whereas any self respecting professional used Maya or 3DS Max, and Adobe products. Now it ate the entire visual effects and video game industries.

Blender provides much of the value of its competitors. A purely CAD tool does not. You have to solve the other problems primarily, while also having CAD. Otherwise, it's like having a text editor when no programming languages exist. What is your business going to do with that?

Re: BRL-CAD

#64

Post by stew-j » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 6:18 PM UTC

sneak wrote: post #51

> The BRL-CAD source code repository is the oldest known public version-controlled codebase in the world that's still under active development, dating back to 1983-12-16 00:10:31 UTC. Wow.

Another interesting fact:

The BRL of BRL-CAD is the Ballistic Research Laboratory:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_Research_Laboratory

which developed, along with the Penn, the first general-purpose digital computer ENIAC:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

Re: BRL-CAD

#65

Post by adastra22 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 9:07 PM UTC

linkdink wrote: post #63

adastra22 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or, to make a directly relevant parallel, the adoption of Blender. It used to be a niche open source tool whereas any self respecting professional used Maya or 3DS Max, and Adobe products. Now it ate the entire visual effects and video game industries.

Blender provides much of the value of its competitors. A purely CAD tool does not. You have to solve the other problems primarily, while also having CAD. Otherwise, it's like having a text editor when no programming languages exist. What is your business going to do with that?

I think you’re fighting a straw man? There needs to be an open-source integrated CAD/CAM environment, like Fusion 360 is. That's what the OP in this subthread is asking for.

Re: BRL-CAD

#66

Post by adastra22 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 9:25 PM UTC

fatneckbeardz wrote: post #53

linkdink wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I speak from two types of experience - both a user of CAE and a developer of CAE. There's no money in CAD by itself, meaning just the drawing part. Drafting is a low-value activity often performed by low-value workers who don't write software. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't make software tools for themselves. It's not like when web developers make web development tools, or when machinists make machinist tools.…

"drafting is a low-value activity " "low-value workers". ... ... ??

Drafting doesn't pay well. It's an entry-level position.

Re: BRL-CAD

#67

Post by buildbot » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 9:26 PM UTC

Dracophoenix wrote: post #39

buildbot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah Fusion360 is incredibly slow on my M1Max, and does terribly bugging things like spam launchdarkley 2 MILLION TIMES if you dns block it…

Any alternatives you'd recommend?

No, I have been looking extensively trying to find a decent option. Possibly Alibre through a VM? Solid edge is another possibility, still a subscription service though.

Re: BRL-CAD

#68

Post by adastra22 » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 9:40 PM UTC

gh02t wrote: post #14

PostOnce wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fusion360 keeps getting worse and worse, they revoke features and jack the price every few months. At some point open source becomes the better value, at least there you know features won't be stolen or the price increased without notice

Yeah to be fair I never actually liked Fusion 360 personally. I don't find it super intuitive, but it is quite powerful and polished and I know some people who use it professionally and can do magic in it. OnShape really is perfect to my tastes in terms of being super intuitive yet powerful, but the cloud aspect gives me heartburn. Part of me hopes Autodesk locking down what used to be very generous license terms on…

Have you tried Shapr3D? It is really intuitive to use. The downsides seem to be (1) it's CAD-only and you have to export to another tool to do analysis or manufacturing steps, and (2) price. But there's a free version to play around with.

Re: BRL-CAD

#69

Post by brlcad » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 9:44 PM UTC

phkahler wrote: post #59

hactually wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be keen to be party to this - off the back of the recent Fusion 360 fiasco i've met a few others interested in this. Currently researching geometric modelling kernels but collaboration in the community and bringing focus would solve this... even if it's better awareness and marketing so that solvespace folk and brlcad folk (and more!) aren't doubling up.

I'd like to get some kind of OSS CAD group going but I'm not sure how much collaboration we could really do. FreeCAD uses OCCT, Solvespace uses it's own thing, and I think BRL-CAD uses its own thing (several of them). Then there are things like gcad3d https://www.gcad3d.org/ which has its own hand written STEP reader/writer which I'd love to borrow some day. If there is interest in creating a new geometry kernel I'd…

It's both a social and technical issue.

For the prior, OpenCAx Association was created specifically to encourage and even sponsor OSS coordination. It's still in formation, but it's purpose has been to help underpin Google Summer of Code collaboration for BRL-CAD, FreeCAD, OpenSCAD, LibreCAD, STEPcode, IfcOpenShell, and most recently KiCAD.

For the latter, creating a shared product or even sharing small subsets of logic is a challenge. BRL-CAD fully invested in and helped establish STEPcode for STEP support, for example, and now it's its own project. Spent more than a million USD developing our STEP support.

BRL-CAD is arguably closest to developing something akin to ACIS or Parasolid as its libraries and converters collectively cover the most features, but not without limitations (e.g., lacking API design, dozen libraries). There's been some talk of integrating OCCT where they have features BRL-CAD lacks, but that's a lot like Creo bundling Parasolid and ACIS with Granite (i.e., lots of representation, conversion, and API considerations). We do have a long-term roadmap but it's all dependent upon what people volunteer and are interested in working on, what we're paid to work on, and what's the best path forward strategically (and from a maintenance perspective).

Right now, we're heavily focused on usability and creating reusable geometry conversion infrastructure (which includes AP242 and a couple dozen other formats) and are making progress getting funding as a multiyear development initiative. Long-term, we're working on the clean API problem developing what we calling the Modular Object-Oriented Solidity Engine (MOOSE).

Re: BRL-CAD

#70

Post by brlcad » Wed, Aug 17, 2022, 10:06 PM UTC

stew-j wrote: post #62

brlcad wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That radio tutorial conversion is awesome. Looks like the code is at http://svn.savannah.gnu.org/viewvc/tovero/trunk/ ? That's some impressive work, particularly some of the advanced geometry entity mapping going on in there.

Thanks! That is the right repo. If you want to use it, I hold the copyright and we could relicense it. "My kingdom for a voice" [1] or maybe "My kingdom for a horse" [2] we did post an item about it on the BRL-CAD mailing list. The Common Lisp community didn't really notice Tovero 2.0 for Common Lisp either. I was actually thinking about trying a Common Lisp wrapper of BRL-CAD, or maybe doing a native CL port. [1] RE…

It looks like your e-mail was the victim of my paternity leave... it's still in my inbox. I do recall Dr. Rai commenting on your post, but didn't get a chance to explore it in any detail at the time.

Remotely related, I've always thought a really fun lisp project would be to create an Emacs major mode for BRL-CAD. Either something to explore .g data (like tar mode) or an interactive editor like mged with lisp wrapping BRL-CAD's libged editing library.