[cad-linux] Re: Status of BRL-CAD development (was Re: test)
- From: Christopher Sean Morrison <brlcad@xxxxxxx>
- To: cad-linux@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 17 Sep 2008 10:59:02 -0400
I'm glad it's still growing and in development too... ;-) Aside from having
survived more than two decades of development already, I don't think we'll be
stopping development anytime soon especially given our renewed momentum and
developer investments. You wouldn't know that we actually have more manpower
effort invested that any other open source modeling system (even more than
content modelers like Blender).
Generating drawings is indeed another often-requested feature and one we
already support albeit in a limited fashion. There is a 2D 'sketch' primitive
that can represent just about all of the geometric entities you'd find in a dxf
file, for example. At the moment, though, editing them directly is impractical
and pretty much all you can do with them as geometry is extrude or revolve them.
We also already have support for generating detailed hidden-line drawings like
one would expect for blue print style uses, but what we lack is dimensioning
information. You can see an example of what I mean in our gallery here [1].
[1] http://brlcad.org/gallery/s/renderings/havoc_rtedge.png.html
The next steps I'm hoping we'll take in this area are to implement dimension
reporting during rasterization. Then as support for parametric constraints
comes to completion, support 2D annotations on all primitives (which could hold
dynamic dimensioning information).
Cheers!
Sean
On Sunday, September 14, 2008, at 02:53PM, "phrostie" <pfrostie@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
>BRL was probably the first(late 90s) cad app i tried on Linux.
>it was where i first learned about solids, i'm glad it's still growing and in
>development. a more refined GUI wouldn't hurt, but what i always wanted to see
>was a 2D module for detailing drawings.
>
>i know in the past this wasn't the the priority for BRL because it was a
>simulation tool, but i really think you would attract a wider user base if this
>could be explored.
>
>just my .01999 USD
>
>--- Christopher Sean Morrison <> wrote:
>
>>
>> Things have been pretty busy with the BRL-CAD project with lots of
>> interesting parallel development efforts in progress. I've not had
>> the time to send out our usual updates and announcements to the cad-
>> linux mailing lists of late simply because we've been busy working to
>> make things better. For those wondering what we're working on,
>> though, our main development priorities are predominantly focused in
>> four main areas which you can read about at http://brlcad.org/BRL-
>> CAD_Priorities.png (727KB PNG). That should give folks a good idea
>> for what our roadmap and priorities look like for the next couple years.
>>
>> A couple new developers have joined the team recently and are quickly
>> getting up to speed with the codebase. You can see one of the latest
>> offerings from them on our website ( http://brlcad.org ) that came
>> out of one individual's *training* nonetheless, where the developer
>> made a really nice automatic and accurate implicit tire generation
>> tool. We've also been making great progress on our BREP/NURBS
>> implementation along with major effort going into refactoring our
>> sources for a new editor interface.
>>
>> Also noteworthy, we're just finishing up our run in the 2008 Google
>> Summer of Code. It was an outstanding summer where we had four
>> students working hard on various projects for BRL-CAD. I intend to
>> send out more details about how that went later but some highlights
>> of that effort are that we now have a new modeler interface under
>> development, several new primitives implemented, and the beginnings
>> of comprehensive parametric equation support for constraints. Since
>> the program was so successful, this is something we'll likely
>> continue to participate in as a source for new features and (more
>> importantly) new developer talent.
>>
>> Lots of folks (and I do mean lots) have made it very clear that they
>> want a better graphical user interface for BRL-CAD. We've known this
>> for years and are working on making things drastically different and
>> much better. We're a very large solid modeling package, though, with
>> a *lot* of functionality that the new interface needs to support. We
>> of course will do things incrementally, but there is still a whole
>> lot of ground work required. We're also in production use, so we're
>> very careful about testing everything to make sure our
>> representations are accurate, robust, and high-performance. It's
>> going to take a while to do things right.
>>
>> Cheers!
>> Sean
>>
>> p.s. The BRL-CAD_Priorities image is a work-in-progress and likely
>> will change, but the content is still pretty solid (no pun
>> intended). If you'd like to help out, whether you are a developer or
>> not, please do get in touch.
>>
>>
>> On Sep 13, 2008, at 4:55 AM, Patrick McLaughlin wrote:
>>
>> > I'm still interested, but not as a coder - primarily want to know
>> > what is
>> > available and/or coming down the pipe in Linux based CAD
>> >
>> > Pat McLaughlin
>> > Alberta, Canada
>> >
>> >
>> > On September 10, 2008 06:16 pm, Moises CastrOporto wrote:
>> >> Maybe active but only a little :)
>> >> mOe:)
>> >> 2008/9/10 john kosty <john_kosty@xxxxxxxxx>
>> >>
>> >>> Testing...
>> >>> this group still active?
>> >>>
>> >>> John Kosty
>> >>> 828 Ralph McGill Boulevard
>> >>> Atlanta, Georgia 30306
>> >>> 404.447.3608
>> >>> john_kosty@xxxxxxxxx
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>phrostie
>Oh I have slipped the surly bonds of DOS
>and danced the skies on Linux silvered wings.
>
>
>
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