[cad-linux] Re: online documentation

> The following was supposedly scribed by
> dave
> on Saturday 13 September 2003 09:24 pm:

>Piece of cake and first
>year basic programmer can do it. Seriously if it were easy AutoDesk
>wouldn't be so huge. They are not gonna tell us how they figured it out.
>Coding it isn't the problem its figuring out how to do that is complex.

Good points.  Maybe a more realizable goal (assuming that this is a semester 
project) would be to evaluate some existing CAD software (and maybe interview 
some engineers and architects) and try to find something that is missing or 
that could be improved.

If they can do this with open-source software, they could then find the way to 
improve it and write a patch.  Otherwise, we have to make assumptions about 
the code design and write a pretend function which could be pretend attached 
to the proprietary system.

There is definitely not enough time to write an entire cad system (especially 
not as a team project) for a single-semester class (I've spent at least that 
much time at 40+hrs/week just to write a set of console batch-processing 
applications with very little user-interactivity.)  Your best bet is to have 
them dig into one of the existing systems (and there are lots of these to 
choose from which are open source and would likely welcome the efforts.)  
They will learn more by taking one apart to see how someone else made it tick 
than by banging their head on the wall to reinvent the wheel and deal with 
all of the start-up complexity of a cad app.

If you really want them to do something from scratch, at least look at 
openCascade, openinventor, or another 2D / 3D library.

--Eric
-- 
"It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious."
                                        --Murphy's Second Corollary

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