IRC log for #brlcad on 20081225

00:11.20 *** part/#brlcad misteriexous (n=ubuntu@217.118.79.39)
00:12.39 csanyipal so long
00:34.55 brlcad there is also a "plane" primitive .. the "half" halfspace primitive will make an infinite plane
01:10.06 Ralith brlcad, ah, cool. What happens when you try to intersect something with it?
01:25.53 brlcad it does what you'd expect -- it's "half" of infinity, so if you intersect a vehicle with it, you'll get a cutting plane
01:26.11 Ralith oh
01:26.14 Ralith not the kind of plane I had in mind
01:26.29 brlcad what did you have in mind?
01:26.38 brlcad it's not infinitely thin
01:26.53 Ralith infinitely thin was what I was going for
01:26.57 brlcad ah
01:27.10 brlcad solid modeling, everything has to have a thickness ;)
01:27.17 Ralith that's what I thought
01:28.10 brlcad it would be interesting/useful to have a user-specific non-zero thickness parameter, but then that wouldn't be a halfspace any longer unless they specified infinity
01:28.35 Ralith nothing wrong with a rename.
01:28.52 brlcad you can get the same effect with two halfspaces that overlap with whatever thickness
01:29.02 Ralith thought that might work; neat
01:29.37 brlcad it's not an optimized primitive, so depending on what you're doing -- you might be much better off using arb8's anyways
01:29.47 Ralith optimized?
01:30.23 brlcad it'll slow down a ray-trace rendering
01:31.12 Ralith ah.
01:31.58 brlcad most of the primitives are optimized, but not the way that one is implemented given how it extends to infinity -- every ray has to test against it
01:32.31 Ralith seems pretty quick to test against, though
01:32.37 brlcad so like if you wanted to chop an object in half, it'd usually be much faster to use a box instead of a half
01:35.01 Ralith so I think we've discussed this before but I don't recall the details and I have more questions anyway; what is/will be the most effective way to get a 2D slice through an object with as little data loss as possible, for purposes such as g-code generation?
01:35.56 Ralith the best I can come up with right now is make a very thin slice and do a orthographic render at very high from directly overhead, then fit splines to it.
01:36.06 Ralith but that's really cheating.
01:36.15 Ralith at very high resolution*
01:45.04 brlcad that's a perfectly viable approach actually, not far off what some of the commercial engines do effectively
01:45.40 Ralith yes, it would *work*
01:46.14 Ralith but I'd feel so much better about a workflow that didn't deliberately drop information and then desperately try to reconstruct as much as possible
01:46.49 brlcad naturally ;)
01:47.24 Ralith not to mention the complexities and accuracy issues of path tracing algos in and of themselves.
01:48.41 brlcad you could get that pretty accurate just because you'd have knowledge of object boundaries
01:48.57 brlcad mostly limited by your sampling resolution, which could be pretty intense as needed
01:49.03 brlcad but like you said, less than ideal
01:49.50 brlcad the alternate approach requires brep support to be complete
01:50.25 brlcad you'd request a brep outline for all objects and then project them onto a plane
01:50.59 Ralith so is brep support something that's being evaluated, or even developed?
01:51.22 brlcad it's the top-priority of the year, been under development for over a year now
01:51.34 Ralith oo!
01:51.37 Ralith encouraging!
01:51.42 brlcad there's basic support in there already
01:51.50 Ralith how far along would you say things are?
01:51.54 brlcad some forms will even ray-trace correctly
01:52.04 Ralith forms?
01:52.29 brlcad different types of surface evaluations
01:53.11 brlcad if you fire a ray at an object, do you get 1, 2, 3, 4, ... N intersections with the surface, when are you inside/outside, how to deal with numerical instability, etc
01:53.30 Ralith ah.
01:53.32 brlcad there are a lot of problems that need to be solved still, but this is being driven by several priorities
01:53.40 Ralith great!
01:53.41 Ralith :D
01:54.02 Ralith this is one of the things I like about BRL-CAD
01:54.14 brlcad the brep/nurbs work is the foudation of interactive (opengl) visualizations, step conversion support, and more
01:54.41 Ralith as a project, it has a great tendency to already be working on all the really neat ideas that you generally don't see bandied about outside of theory.
01:55.52 Ralith so that's how it relates to the tesselation stuff. Remembered you saying something about that last time this came up but didn't follow the connection.
01:56.21 Ralith thanks for the info :)
01:56.43 brlcad the same thing that would let us ask for a contour for projection onto a plane to get splines is basic to the brep form
01:57.17 brlcad from there, you can easily tessellate as it (presuming we have implemented csg evaluation of brep-on-brep objects)
01:57.36 Ralith what field of study most completely encompasses this sort of thing?
01:57.48 brlcad http://brlcad.org/BRL-CAD_Priorities.png <-- bottom-left priority
01:57.56 Ralith computational gemoetry?
01:58.27 brlcad er, loosely/sorta/not-really
01:58.48 Ralith didn't think so.
01:59.03 brlcad it does and it doesn't -- CG covers some of the fundamental algorithms and generally assumes clean numerics
02:00.05 Ralith 'clean numerics' meaning no loss of precision due to fp inaccuracies etc.?
02:00.17 brlcad from there you can build up the more complicated algorithms, but without resorting to fixed-point arithmetic (and taking a massive performance penalty -- like two orders of magnitude) there are lots of practical implementation problems that still have to be addressed
02:02.37 Ralith so *is* there such a thing as a formal field of study covering this sort of real-world implementation?
02:02.58 Ralith (also: that poster is beautiful. Who put it together?)
02:04.46 brlcad there's lots of work in the area of solid modeling research -- an acm conference dedicated to it as well as a few others
02:05.50 brlcad there are just literally hundreds of algorithms and issues in any given CAD or solid modeling system, boundary structure evaluation just being a small set of them
02:06.37 Ralith of course.
02:09.26 brlcad oh, and I put that poster together
02:09.59 Ralith nice!
02:10.01 Ralith what'd you lay it out in?
02:10.09 brlcad hm
02:10.41 brlcad probably either Pages or InDesign, don't recall
02:11.07 Ralith pages?
02:11.38 brlcad it never went out to the list because it got a less than favorable review by one the editors at arl, said it was too confusing and too many words
02:11.55 Ralith bah.
02:12.01 brlcad http://www.apple.com/iwork/pages/
02:12.11 Ralith it's a technical subject. Walls of text are par for the course.
02:13.26 Ralith unless it was supposed to be some sort of general-audience PR material, but I can't imagine what most of a general audience would want to do with BRL-CAD in the first place.
02:16.32 brlcad audience was general user community, anyone that would care what our high-level roadmap looks like
02:17.24 brlcad so they did have a little bit of a point, whether it matters for this was arguable, but it was enough to not send it out without thinking about reworking some parts
02:21.40 Ralith ah well.
03:01.19 *** join/#brlcad IriX64 (n=IriX64@bas2-sudbury98-1177871582.dsl.bell.ca)
03:01.49 IriX64 http://rafb.net/p/ushWLt28.html <---- 3 or 4 of these went by, do you know or care about them?
03:04.00 IriX64 or is my compiler in error :)
03:08.06 IriX64 http://rafb.net/p/NItopl53.html <--- this too my compiler presented me with
03:12.02 IriX64 sigh... i wish i'd never dropped out of special ed :)
05:05.02 *** join/#brlcad Ralith (n=ralith@216.162.199.202)
06:17.33 *** join/#brlcad WhiteCalf (i=WhiteCal@whitecalf.net)
08:23.40 *** join/#brlcad csanyipal (n=csanyipa@91.102.231.33)
10:08.56 *** join/#brlcad mafm (n=mafm@172.Red-83-45-253.dynamicIP.rima-tde.net)
10:09.14 mafm hi
10:23.48 csanyipal hi
10:25.11 csanyipal Ralith: when I create a plane as arb8 shape with zero hight, then I can't raytrace it, in the framebuffer it can't see. Why?
10:26.23 Ralith csanyipal: as far as the raytracer is concerned, if it doesn't have volume, it doesn't exist.
10:38.00 csanyipal Ralith: OK thanks!
11:01.33 Axman6 ha, set brlcad to checkout about 12 hours ago... came home, it was asking me to if i want to accept the ssh key -_-
11:02.19 Axman6 s/set brlcad to checkout/set svn to checkout brlcad
11:02.42 *** join/#brlcad Elrohir (n=kvirc@p5B14EFC3.dip.t-dialin.net)
11:14.09 *** join/#brlcad elite01 (n=omg@unaffiliated/elite01)
11:37.51 *** join/#brlcad Ralith (n=ralith@216.162.199.202)
14:01.49 brlcad csanyipal: I was saying yesterday, there is an infinite-plane primitive -- it's the "half" halfspace primitive
14:07.26 csanyipal brlcad: thank you, I find it, and tried it out.
14:09.58 csanyipal Still I don't know how to create the shape that is on the picture "Azimuth, Elevation, and the xyz Coordinate System" in the tutorial "Volume II - Introduction to MGED" at page 18.
14:12.10 csanyipal That shape shows the angle of the Azimuth.
14:13.03 brlcad I modeled that, what would you like to know?
14:13.21 brlcad it's a pretty simple shape
14:24.08 csanyipal It's difficult to explain because of my "weak" English.
14:26.15 brlcad I went to some intricate lengths to get exact cuts and no overlaps with very specific shapes in mind -- but the basic shape is that of a torus with arbs cutting off the portion I didn't want and a tgc on the end
14:26.19 csanyipal The shape looks like a part of a torus and have in front a trc Truncated Right Cone
14:26.37 brlcad basically
14:27.05 brlcad it could be done a little more easily using a pipe, but I didn't know it back then
14:27.20 brlcad one pipe with a tgc, no need for subtracted arbs
14:28.25 csanyipal But can one bend a pipe?
14:30.31 csanyipal And how to direct the tgc in the right direction?
14:31.13 brlcad of course you can bend a pipe, that's what they consist of -- bend segments and straight segments
14:31.33 csanyipal Aha, there is a bend point!
14:31.49 brlcad trc's are the same as a tgc, just a specific subcase
14:32.01 csanyipal I try the command in pipe.s pipe
14:32.05 brlcad all the conics end up being a tgc as it's a general case
14:32.23 csanyipal yes
14:32.29 brlcad the tgc is specified with a point and a vector -- that puts it in the right direction
14:33.10 brlcad there are just additional vectors for orienting and sizing the top ellipse and base ellipse caps
14:33.27 csanyipal tgc has a Vertex and a high vector and radius of base and of top
14:33.53 brlcad few more parameters
14:34.18 brlcad sounds about right for the trc
14:36.21 csanyipal I know that but when I want to give the values (x,y,z) for the high vector then .. OK, I'll try it out now.
14:37.23 csanyipal thanks for the advice about pipe!
14:37.30 brlcad start with something simple so you understand the shape, and turn on your model axes so you can see what direction is what
14:37.55 csanyipal yes, I did that alreday..
14:38.01 csanyipal already
14:38.26 csanyipal o
14:38.28 csanyipal ok
15:17.12 csanyipal brlcad: If you have i little time: I don't understand at pipe the points for the pipe and bend points
15:18.03 csanyipal mged> in pipe.s pipe 2 0 0 0 0.1 1 100 100 0 0 0.1 1 50
15:18.41 csanyipal give to me a right pipe and not a bended pipe
15:23.53 csanyipal brlcad: OK I find a tutorial for the pipe in the Volume III - Principles of Effective Modelling
15:49.25 *** join/#brlcad redvsblue (i=Pandora@c-69-247-220-102.hsd1.mo.comcast.net)
15:57.16 *** join/#brlcad DanielFalck (n=dan@pool-71-111-64-53.ptldor.dsl-w.verizon.net)
20:05.57 *** join/#brlcad alex_joni (n=juve@emc/board-of-directors/alexjoni) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:07.35 *** join/#brlcad redvsblue (i=Pandora@c-69-247-220-102.hsd1.mo.comcast.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:07.35 *** join/#brlcad Ralith (n=ralith@216.162.199.202) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:07.35 *** join/#brlcad mafm (n=mafm@172.Red-83-45-253.dynamicIP.rima-tde.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:07.35 *** join/#brlcad archivist (n=archivis@host81-149-119-172.in-addr.btopenworld.com) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:07.42 *** join/#brlcad brlcad (n=sean@bz.bzflag.bz)
20:07.42 *** join/#brlcad d-lo (n=claymore@bz.bzflag.bz) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:07.42 *** join/#brlcad ChanServ (ChanServ@services.)
20:07.42 *** mode/#brlcad [+oo brlcad ChanServ] by irc.freenode.net
20:09.20 *** join/#brlcad DanielFalck (n=dan@pool-71-111-64-53.ptldor.dsl-w.verizon.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad Elrohir (n=kvirc@p5B14EFC3.dip.t-dialin.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad bjork_ (n=bjork@ip72-204-40-138.fv.ks.cox.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad mon8 (i=yoda@CPE0016d35dfacc-CM000f9f7f1258.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad PrezKennedy (i=Matthew@whitecalf.net)
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad Axman6 (n=Axman6@pdpc/supporter/student/Axman6) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad MinuteElectron (n=MinuteEl@unaffiliated/minuteelectron) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad kanzure (i=bbishop@66.112.232.117) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad SWPadnos (n=Me@emc/developer/SWPadnos) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad yukonbob (i=1000@s142-179-54-198.bc.hsia.telus.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:09.21 *** join/#brlcad poolio (n=poolio@bz.bzflag.bz) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad DanielFalck (n=dan@pool-71-111-64-53.ptldor.dsl-w.verizon.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad Elrohir (n=kvirc@p5B14EFC3.dip.t-dialin.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad bjork_ (n=bjork@ip72-204-40-138.fv.ks.cox.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad mon8 (i=yoda@CPE0016d35dfacc-CM000f9f7f1258.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad PrezKennedy (i=Matthew@whitecalf.net)
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad Axman6 (n=Axman6@pdpc/supporter/student/Axman6) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad SWPadnos (n=Me@emc/developer/SWPadnos) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad yukonbob (i=1000@s142-179-54-198.bc.hsia.telus.net) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad poolio (n=poolio@bz.bzflag.bz) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.30 *** join/#brlcad kanzure (i=bbishop@66.112.232.117) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.31 *** join/#brlcad MinuteElectron (n=MinuteEl@unaffiliated/minuteelectron) [NETSPLIT VICTIM]
20:12.32 *** join/#brlcad elite01 (n=omg@unaffiliated/elite01)
21:42.48 *** join/#brlcad mafm_ (n=mafm@172.Red-83-45-253.dynamicIP.rima-tde.net)
22:18.55 *** join/#brlcad misteriexous (n=ubuntu@217.118.79.45)
22:19.30 misteriexous i have a grammar check languagetool.org + new java6.0 engine
22:19.57 misteriexous (just want to know an exact time at ibot)
22:21.36 *** part/#brlcad misteriexous (n=ubuntu@217.118.79.45)
23:19.51 *** join/#brlcad ``Erik (i=erik@c-68-54-174-162.hsd1.md.comcast.net)

Generated by irclog2html.pl Modified by Tim Riker to work with infobot.