IRC log for #brlcad on 20080106

00:23.32 stuporglu1 Could someone tell me if BRL-CAD would be an appropriate tool for the following? I want to make a TV cabinet, but I want to model it first, including a folding top and some other moving parts. If I create the cabinet in BRL-CAD, can I run it through the movements to verify that there is enough clearance for all movements?
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19:19.54 starseeker Once again I somehow miss major news - PVS got released under the GPL.
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19:59.03 archivist PVS?
20:08.48 fenn http://pvs.csl.sri.com/introduction.shtml
20:17.30 archivist hmm interesting
20:21.51 *** join/#brlcad smudla (n=smudla@ip-89-103-100-226.karneval.cz)
20:22.03 smudla hi folks
20:24.27 smudla i've got some questions about brlcad, is anyone alive here? :-)
20:27.31 smudla i'm looking for a linux 3d modeller for my design of a sailing yacht
20:29.40 fenn for hull design or all the little bits?
20:29.54 fenn brlcad is better for geometrically shaped bits
20:29.58 smudla so i would like to talk to any experienced brlcad user... i was considering modelling in blender but that's really rather artistic modeller than cad
20:30.33 smudla hull design is best to do in specialized programs like delftship etc...
20:31.24 smudla i mean hull design in terms of stability, hydrodinamics and other marine-related stuff
20:32.47 smudla so, for now, say that my hull (simply the hull, ie outer dimensions) is finished
20:33.36 smudla now i need to create a precise model of whole yacht, so of course model of the hull but with all the things inside
20:33.53 fenn why do you need to create a precise model of the yacht?
20:35.38 archivist someone did a ship fly through movie from a brlcad model
20:35.48 smudla heh...why are 3d models made generally...
20:36.15 archivist better visualisation of the object
20:36.17 smudla documentation, manufacturing data
20:37.02 archivist I find I am faster designing in 3d nowadays
20:39.08 smudla frankly, my boat wont be a megayacht but still, 8 metres sailing boat is too expensive thing to make it a trial-error way, so i need everything modelled before i even touch a hammer :-)
20:43.22 smudla so, one of my questions is: is it possible to "draw" a pair of curves through precise coordinates and then to form a surface between these curves?
20:44.11 smudla (imagine upper line of the side of the boat and the waterline for example)
20:46.40 smudla generally irregular, non-developable surface but precisely determined using several points
20:47.08 alex_joni sounds like NURBS modelling to me
20:49.19 smudla exacly
20:49.41 smudla no problem with brlcad?
20:50.28 brlcad hello smudla
20:50.56 brlcad smudla: are you the one that posted to the forums about hull modelling a while back?
20:51.30 smudla no, that a different fool :-)
20:51.45 brlcad if you can precisely define the shape of the hull in terms of existing implicit surfaces, then brl-cad will work very well for you
20:52.37 smudla yes, i have exact coordinates of enough points on the surface to create it uniquely
20:52.45 brlcad otherwise for arbitrary spline surfaces, you're either going to be using an experimental primitive (brl-cad has spline surfaces, but not yet production-ready) or will be using some intermediate type (BoT's with smoothed normals, for example)
20:53.55 brlcad as for what you want to do .. drawing a pair of curves through precise coordinates .. that would usually be provided via a birail primitive
20:54.04 brlcad which .. brl-cad does not yet have
20:54.21 smudla maybe i dont understand the term "implicit surfaces"
20:55.58 brlcad that's a much longer topic to explain .. but for now just think of it like whether you can construct the hull using CSG primitives instead of using a birail or spline surface
20:56.53 brlcad here are most of the primitives supported in brl-cad: http://ftp.brlcad.org/tmp/primitives/Primitives3_grouped.png
20:57.21 brlcad that doesn't include the developmental surfaces (superellipsoids, metaballs, and nurbs, maybe a couple others)
20:57.22 smudla thx, i'll have a look
20:59.12 brlcad smudla: I think you'll *really* want something that will let you model using a birail primitive if your precise dataset is pointwise, which doesn't leave you with many non-commercial CAD options
20:59.20 smudla hmm, i can hardly imagine a hull shape created from any of these primitives...
20:59.23 brlcad i believe blender does have a birail, but then as you mentioned, it's not great for cad
20:59.46 brlcad smudla: you'd probably be surprised what you can make with those primitives ;)
21:00.04 smudla yea, thats exactly what i'm coming across
21:00.18 brlcad we do have ships in brl-cad constructed with primitives, just usually requires an entirely different design approach and thought process
21:01.48 brlcad that said, if you're a developer, I'd be more than glad to help you implement a birail primitive :-)
21:01.49 smudla in fact, i take brlcad as the only possibility to do my task in non-commercial cad...all other projects are significantly less developed
21:02.17 starseeker brlcad: I'll bet the sf admins are going to shoot you when they figure out how big this svn archive is :-) I'm making a backup tarball and so far it's heading towards 8 gigs with no end in sight ;-)
21:02.20 brlcad yeah, we're by far the most developed.. and we still need TONS of effort
21:02.45 smudla sorry...i am a developer, but my job is hw development...so electronics...sorry :-)
21:03.12 brlcad starseeker: the archive itself is much more compressed
21:03.27 brlcad you're doing a checkout of the top-level?
21:03.29 starseeker Ah :-)
21:03.49 starseeker More or less by mistake - I just grabbed the command on sf's svn page
21:04.22 brlcad e.g. if I tagged the repository 100 times, it'll be 100x size on checkout but only 1x + few bytes per tag in the repository
21:04.35 brlcad yeah, their instructions are a bit wonky
21:04.35 starseeker Ah.
21:04.42 starseeker that explains a lot
21:04.45 brlcad thought they do warn in not so many words
21:05.14 starseeker I'm too used to the cvs side I guess...
21:05.16 brlcad I suspect a full top-level checkout is going to be .. huge
21:05.23 starseeker It was
21:05.46 PrezKennedy sourceforge is turning evil
21:07.54 *** join/#brlcad Twingy (n=justin@74.92.144.217)
21:08.23 brlcad PrezKennedy: how so?
21:09.22 PrezKennedy window popped up asking me if i wanted to be notified if paid support for the program i was downloading became available
21:09.23 brlcad looks like there is about 100 tags and branches so it's going to be about 100x the real size .. which looks like about 50-200 MB/tag|branch
21:09.31 brlcad ewww
21:09.58 PrezKennedy still like it for the software of course... but they just seem to be piling on junk now to make a buck
21:10.25 brlcad some marketing weenie has gotten ahold of their web team -- they've been trying to push the new marketplace for a couple months
21:11.07 brlcad first with some exceptionally annoyingly bright gold "button" (which they later toned way way down)
21:11.14 starseeker brlcad: How long until the cvs repo goes away in favor of svn? few months testing time?
21:11.15 PrezKennedy they should try making forums that dont suck... thats where most the support takes place
21:12.44 starseeker Holiday gatherings always seem to be a guarantee of importing some exotic code germ from somewhere...
21:12.55 brlcad starseeker: um, probably never "away", unless you mean no longer displayed .. but yeah, probably a release or two after svn is fully verified
21:13.39 starseeker brlcad: I was just thinking if future development was taking place only in svn, having the cvs repo still listed could cause some confusion when people checked it out and saw no changes...
21:13.52 curious starseeker, sorry for continuing offtopic , but if you will google for 'transfer factor' you can turn that bug into feature
21:14.04 curious starseeker, there are easy immunization methods.
21:14.39 brlcad starseeker: yeah, I know that
21:14.49 brlcad that's what I meant about it being "hidden" but not really going away
21:15.02 brlcad i.e. it won't be deleted, but yeah, not displayed
21:15.06 starseeker right. I just didn't know when the cvs tree would stop receiving updates
21:15.19 brlcad that's already happened
21:15.23 starseeker Ah :-)
21:15.44 brlcad unless I run into a big problem this week
21:15.51 starseeker righto :-)
21:15.56 PrezKennedy murphy's law
21:16.00 smudla brlcad: you mentioned some forum, where could i find it?
21:17.15 brlcad already verified several things so far: successful dump and clean import, ability to extract full log, still trying to verify ability to checkout everything (first attempt failed in branches)
21:17.38 brlcad smudla: I didn't mention any forums, but we do have forums up on sourceforge
21:17.45 brlcad http://sourceforge.net/forum/?group_id=105292
21:17.54 starseeker pretty impressive, given that you're probably close to a record for size of history being converted ;-)
21:18.39 smudla 21:50:53 <brlcad> smudla: are you the one that posted to the forums about hull modelling a while back?
21:19.18 brlcad ooooh, so I did *blush*
21:19.25 smudla ;-)
21:19.35 smudla thanks a lot, anyway :-)
21:21.59 brlcad I think I was thinking of this message: http://sourceforge.net/forum/message.php?msg_id=4351966
21:22.18 brlcad a skin primitive would also have helped with what you're trying to do
21:24.09 brlcad which might change too :)
21:24.26 brlcad right now it was all imported as a single-project repository
21:24.35 brlcad i'm *really* not sure that I like it that way
21:25.00 starseeker Hmm. You thinking to break out the major libraries into their own repositories?
21:25.09 brlcad no no
21:25.36 brlcad when you set up conversion from cvs to svn, you can do it as a single repository or as multiple projects
21:25.47 starseeker Oh, OK.
21:26.06 brlcad mostly impacting where the trunk/tags/branches triplets are -- one at the top-level, or one for each module
21:26.54 brlcad difference of needing to do svn co https://brlcad.svn.sf.net:/svnroot/brlcad/trunk/brlcad brlcad versus svn co https://brlcad.svn.sf.net:/svnroot/brlcad/brlcad/trunk brlcad
21:27.30 starseeker Got it.
21:29.23 starseeker The more fine-grained approach does seem to make sense
21:30.56 smudla brlcad: thanks for the link, it seems to be interesting, maybe i wont give up my brlcad-efforts :-)
21:32.20 brlcad smudla: best of luck to you whichever path you take, of course
21:32.40 brlcad I really do hope we get nurbs and birail primitives working soon, there's just so much to do that one has to choose their battles
21:34.20 starseeker Niiice. The svn configure uses the system libs in all but 4 cases
21:34.52 smudla brlcad: is there any estimation of "soon"? :-)
21:35.56 smudla i mean if we are talking about months or years...
21:37.45 brlcad smudla: entirely depends on how many developers are working on what .. which does tend to fluctuate drastically
21:37.51 brlcad ~spell drastically
21:37.57 brlcad huh
21:38.59 brlcad I can say, however, that fully NURBS representation support is our #1 core priority at the moment, followed closely by STEP conversion support
21:40.08 smudla so good luck
21:40.15 brlcad that effort alone exhausts most existing developer resources for the next 6 months minimum
21:41.06 brlcad that said .. a birail primitive wouldn't really be that hard for a dev.. probably could be fully implemented in less than a month with guidance
21:41.09 smudla again, pity that i'm a hardware guy so i can't contribute with code
21:44.59 Z80-Boy smudla: hehe nekdo z cech?
21:46.13 smudla kusuj vole, be social and speak in english... i'm doing my best although my english is terrible :-)
21:46.57 Z80-Boy smudla: where are you from?
21:47.10 smudla Pilsen
22:02.24 starseeker Sweet - NSIS!
22:02.40 starseeker Good news indeed
22:11.39 brlcad smudla: your english is great
22:11.50 brlcad better than many westerners ;)
22:12.06 starseeker Indeed :-)
22:12.20 starseeker All we speak over here is American :-P
22:13.32 smudla haha...stop making fun of me :-D
22:16.18 smudla i cannot find any debian package of brlcad...you probably don't know about some too...?
22:19.49 brlcad not yet properly integrated with apt yet
22:19.58 brlcad a couple have worked on it, but nobody to completion
22:20.10 brlcad there is a .deb for 7.8.4 on the website iirc
22:21.04 brlcad that should work fine for a new user, otherwise you can compile from source and it'll install isolated into /usr/brlcad
22:22.01 smudla that seems to be the best way
22:23.15 smudla maybe i can start with older version, you're right...now i'm interested mostly in the ARS primitive
22:23.45 smudla because "waterline" sounds quite familiar to me :-)
22:30.23 brlcad :-)
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23:02.00 smudla i'm browsing the documentation of brlcad but i can't find any detailed info about primitives...where could i for example learn about how to input the waterlines?
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