irclog2html for #brlcad on 20050113

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00:13.38 nayasi hei
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03:55.58 learner hello mycr0ft
03:56.16 learner mycr0ft, the getting started link on brlcad.org is the relevant portions of volume I
03:56.34 mycr0ft ah OK thanks learner
03:56.43 learner the rest of volume one involved distribution, license agreements, etc -- all invalidated by the open sourcing
03:57.08 mycr0ft sweet
03:57.47 mycr0ft OK I've downloaded everything and will be trying out BRLCAD right after I finish all my SBIR proposals. Sigh.
03:57.56 mycr0ft Thanks
03:58.11 learner sounds like fun (not)
03:58.33 learner slipping some brl-cad improvements into the sbir? :)
03:58.45 learner or leveraging the codebase ;)
03:58.57 learner (it's been done before so I'm not exactly joking)
03:59.21 mycr0ft Actually BRLCAD doesn't really enter into this round.
03:59.47 mycr0ft I'm writing on MEMS projects and a Natural Language parser.
03:59.49 learner mged's replacement is actually coming out of an sbir as will much of the windows support
04:00.15 learner ahh, nlp is fun stuff
04:00.17 mycr0ft I think getting SBIR support for OSS software would be a worthy goal
04:00.51 mycr0ft Especially when it can benefit both the govt partner and the general community
04:01.02 learner it would, though it's more support of an "old, stable, powerful military code" ...
04:01.08 learner ... that happens to now be open source
04:01.15 learner exactly
04:01.30 mycr0ft unfortunately, the one problem with the SBIR program is the Commercialization aspect of it.
04:01.55 mycr0ft And OSS software is a hard sell since you have to claim that you are selling support contracts
04:02.02 mycr0ft or services
04:02.20 mycr0ft At least that's what I got back in one review
04:02.52 learner actually not that hard for a codebase like brl-cad
04:03.10 learner brl-cad is just an underlying code used to some other means usually
04:03.24 mycr0ft Yeah, that's true.
04:03.46 mycr0ft The licensing on the BRL Code-base... is it more BSD or more GPL?
04:04.07 learner it's like picking up libpng or some other library .. lots of facilities jump-starting the project
04:04.33 learner different parts are under different license
04:04.44 learner the binaries are under the gpl
04:04.50 learner the libraries are under the lgpl
04:05.01 learner the docs are under the gfdl
04:05.23 learner the build system, support scripts, benchmark suite, regression test suite are all under the bsd license or in the public domain
04:05.45 mycr0ft Thanks for the info. \n Well, I gotta sleep before I croak... I've got to finish 2 more SBIR proposals by Friday morning.
04:05.53 learner good luck
04:06.06 mycr0ft gl to you too.
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04:53.04 PrezKennedy aint nothin like bein rejected cuz youre on a different "intelectual" level :-\
04:53.20 PrezKennedy me bein on the upper side no less
05:19.29 learner heh
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07:58.51 learner wb noyb
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15:31.48 brlcad ahh, just missed him
15:34.14 EricWilhelm brlcad, I think brlcad's sketcher is a little clunky
15:34.20 EricWilhelm Is it just me?
15:34.33 brlcad no, it's very clunky
15:34.51 brlcad it was minimal support for a very limited task
15:35.06 EricWilhelm what would it take to export the sketch geometry and let a drafting program edit it?
15:35.30 EricWilhelm (e.g. like your mail client or browser launching an external program with a tempfile name)
15:35.43 brlcad in general, brl-cad has had no funding for 2d-related geometries, anything related to drafting, CAM, etc
15:36.38 brlcad i'd imagine that the easiest would be to add direct export support for the sketch primitive to the converter formats that can handle it (like g-dxf)
15:36.43 EricWilhelm what about printing a hidden-line drawingL (as vectors, not raster/rendered)
15:37.08 EricWilhelm but .g can't have simultaneous access, right?
15:37.33 EricWilhelm s/drawingL/drawing?/
15:37.39 brlcad not from separate processes
15:38.09 EricWilhelm can brlcad create a .g tempfile from a slice of the database?
15:38.21 EricWilhelm and read any modifications back in?
15:39.08 EricWilhelm that would make for a very hackable plugin architecture
15:39.12 brlcad yes it can
15:39.30 brlcad you can "keep" geometry and various was to read them back on
15:41.47 EricWilhelm what code would I have to work with? The mged source?
15:47.48 EricWilhelm (or is there a way to do it with scripts?)
15:48.55 brlcad the code to "keep" subsets of a .g and reload them are available via the api and as simple mged commands .. so that part is pretty flexible
15:49.32 brlcad the conversion of that geometry to another format via a converter would be the work involved
15:50.15 EricWilhelm okay, say I want to replace the create->sketch menu item code. Does that have to be compiled-in?
15:50.45 brlcad e.g. you keep all.g from moss.g to a file.. run g-dxf or g-iges on that file with sketch pritive support coded in .. edit somewhere else, then iges-g or dxf-g back and reload into .g
15:51.13 brlcad ahh, to replace the sketch menu code is all tclscripting
15:51.16 brlcad src/tclscripts
15:51.20 brlcad mged
15:52.20 EricWilhelm /usr/local/brlcad/tclscripts/mged/ ?
15:54.33 EricWilhelm is this all in some developer documentation that I should be reading?
15:55.32 brlcad yes.. that's where tclscripts gets installed to
15:55.50 brlcad it's basically a direct copy from src/tclscripts to $prefix/tclscripts
15:56.05 brlcad with a package index step in between
15:56.40 brlcad There's the HACKING file at the top level for general documentation .. for code-level, what you find is what you get
15:57.05 brlcad for the C library interfaces, there are manpages documentation
15:58.12 brlcad e.g. brlman libfb
15:58.51 brlcad Oh, and there's developer documentation from within mged on the help menu
15:59.18 brlcad there's a broad set of developer commands not listed in the general command set
16:04.05 brlcad and of course feel free to drop questions in here .. it's a lot of code to get to, but generally easy to follow one piece at a time
16:10.16 EricWilhelm hmm. It sounds like it would only take a day or two to make qcad the sketcher. Am I kidding myself?
16:13.25 brlcad ooh, very interesting idea
16:14.47 brlcad actually that sounds fairly reasonable .. "hardest" part is going to be making sure that the converter is supporting the primitive in question
16:15.11 brlcad and that's not really that hard .. just another case statement and a some writes
16:17.51 EricWilhelm is there any "special" data in a sketch? (e.g. named entities or "the legbone's connected to the thighbone" type stuff)
16:18.05 EricWilhelm or, would randomly ordered connected lines work?
16:19.12 brlcad to be honest, I don't recall
16:19.17 EricWilhelm E.G. in other sketchers (pro-e, catia, inventor), you have constraints to model geometry, etc that can't be represented in dxf.
16:19.39 brlcad the geometry primitives as a datatype are defined in librt
16:20.29 brlcad src/librt/g_sketch.c
16:21.13 brlcad brl-cad does not have explicit constraints (yet), so it sounds pretty safe to assume randomly ordered is fine
16:21.43 brlcad constraints are one of the funded todo items over the next year
16:26.55 EricWilhelm <homer>hmm... funded (drool...)</homer>
16:27.30 EricWilhelm how would a dumb cad program deal with constraints?
16:27.34 brlcad so are a variety of other goodies
16:27.51 EricWilhelm maybe with a constraint editor? (external to both brlcad and the cad program?)
16:28.21 EricWilhelm e.g. it seems to me that the biggest problem with most sketchers is the inability to just throw-down some geometry
16:28.27 brlcad well, dumb cad program is most likely only supporting dumb cad format
16:28.42 EricWilhelm they all seem to want you to constrain it as you draw it
16:28.58 brlcad uni and pro do, sure
16:29.15 EricWilhelm maybe Draft could grow-up to be a constaint-based drafting program
16:29.41 brlcad little colored light telling you if you are fully/partially/un-constrained was a pita
16:29.56 brlcad but in the end, useful/good
16:30.08 brlcad Draft is part of qcad?
16:30.12 brlcad or something else
16:30.35 EricWilhelm it certainly isn't trying to work with a dumb cad format (this is Bruno's cddf prototype (http://bugbear.blackfish.org.uk/~bruno/draft/)
16:32.04 brlcad hrm, i'll have to take a look at that
16:32.32 brlcad i'd imagine the dumb cad modeler will have to smarten up some ;)
16:32.37 EricWilhelm of course, with a cddf (cad directory database format), you could have a drawing editor running next to a constraint editor
16:33.23 brlcad i see it more as making your values complex types, expressions
16:33.39 brlcad you need a consistent way to refer to other geometry
16:33.50 brlcad and support for your basic math
16:34.30 EricWilhelm rhizopod is the current uber-converter format, but doesn't have any facility for relational drafting, however it is probably the framework for the next level, which would be less static
16:36.13 brlcad so instead of "radius == 3" .. it supports "radius == [box.corner.4.x * .3]
16:36.16 EricWilhelm Right. When you get relational, the endpoints, radii, etc. have to be expressed as formulas or functions.
16:36.17 brlcad or something
16:36.44 EricWilhelm But, I think that the rhizopod format lays a groundwork for what could be an addressable version.
16:37.25 EricWilhelm And, with persistent entity ID's, I'm not sure that the drafting program ever has to worry about the formulas.
16:38.46 EricWilhelm e.g. if you can just scratch-out the geometry and then apply constraints in another program, the drafting program could just have a way to display constraints and lock values which cannot be modified directly (you can only change box.corner.4.x, not radius)
16:40.39 brlcad that would be good, I'd imagine you'd conversely want to allow direct access/modification of those constraints for packages that do have good constraint management (unigraphics, for example)
16:44.24 EricWilhelm right, but with the cddf (let's say that the step after rhizopod is medusa (a jellyfish (complicated enough to hurt you, but still relatively simple))) both programs (in the two-program version) would be using the same data (but the drafting app would just see read-only files where the geometry is dependent)
16:44.51 EricWilhelm so, the independent geometry in the medusa format is identical to static geometry in the rhizopod format
16:45.30 EricWilhelm therefore, a rhizopod drafting app can change any independent geometry, and a medusa-aware constraint editor can just handle constraints (but not draw anything)
16:45.57 EricWilhelm ok, so if you add drafting to the constraint editor, you get an all-in-one program that is a medusa editor
16:45.57 brlcad and something like brl-cad that understands both could do both :)
16:46.06 EricWilhelm right
16:46.43 EricWilhelm but does brlcad modify the sketch geometry or just use it?
16:47.01 EricWilhelm since brlcad is a csg editor, that's a few steps past medusa
16:48.26 brlcad it reads/writes it and uses it
16:48.40 brlcad it's just the editing capabilities are primitive
16:49.02 EricWilhelm okay, so maybe brlcad's editing is limited to exporting faces of existing solids or something?
16:49.08 brlcad but once you have one, and it's extruded, it's just as fully useable as any of the other solids
16:49.17 brlcad for intersection analyses etc
16:49.24 EricWilhelm sort of an interactive g2rhizopod
16:49.48 EricWilhelm create->sketch->from_solid
16:50.17 brlcad hrm
16:50.46 EricWilhelm s/g2rhizopod/g2medusa/
16:50.55 brlcad that would be interesting perhaps.. but right now the sketch (which is covered briefly in volume III or IV iirc)
16:51.23 brlcad the sketch is just a basic collection of spline curves thatdescribe an enclosed space
16:51.33 brlcad you extrude that space to form a useable solid object
16:51.56 brlcad bbiab
16:53.26 EricWilhelm I'll have to find some time and dig around a bit. Making a way to use an external drafting program for sketches would be my first step. That would give the uber-converter something to do (not that I have time or funding for the uber-converter right now...)
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20:30.12 PhantomBantam Hello.
20:30.58 jano howdy
20:32.16 PhantomBantam Any idea when the mac binary will be posted?
20:37.22 jano he'll know
20:43.27 PhantomBantam Okay.
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