Stream: brlcad

Topic: About BRL-CAD

Naseef (Dec 07 2017 at 18:32):

Was BRL-CAD been in development in the past years or recently revived?
Don't get me wrong, The program looks really outdated. Even the guides are outdated too. (I'm reading a tutorial for MGED written back in 2001).

Abhishek Prasad (Dec 07 2017 at 20:24):

Most of the standards and the principles remain the same for years specially in open source because we work for the community and the community is too lazy to rewrite stuff. Just like programming languages, MGED is also a language for CAD.

Naseef (Jan 10 2018 at 14:28):

Is there an icon for MGED executable?

Naseef (Jan 11 2018 at 10:14):

Naseef (Jan 11 2018 at 10:15):

Is this banner designed in BRL-CAD?

Sean (Jan 12 2018 at 16:47):

It was made a few years ago by a GCI student who had considerable design experience

Sean (Jan 12 2018 at 16:48):

I think he used a variety of tools if i recall correctly

Sean (Jan 12 2018 at 16:48):

not that he couldn't have made it entirely in BRL-CAD, it's not strictly necessary for that task

Naseef (Jan 17 2018 at 15:13):

Shouldn't BRL-CAD be called ARL-CAD?

Sean (Jan 17 2018 at 15:42):

not in my humble opinion ... :)

Jeff Sieu (Jan 17 2018 at 15:43):

Shouldn't BRL-CAD be called ARL-CAD?

Why?

Naseef (Jan 17 2018 at 15:44):

Because Ballistic Research Laboratory is now called Army Research Laboratory.
or is that an entirely new lab?

Sean (Jan 17 2018 at 15:44):

it's a different lab in many ways

Sean (Jan 17 2018 at 15:45):

it's the same lab in fewer ways

Naseef (Feb 20 2018 at 20:14):

Is there any other location where developers talk about brlcad? I come here like every day and I rarely see someone talking in this zulip server.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:01):

@Naseef there is always a little burn out after GCI ... it takes out a lot of energy, but most of the discussions are here, on IRC, or on the mailing list

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:20):

You've been really helpful during GCI. I think GSoC student projects will add more features and fixes to BRL-CAD. I've been learning Qt for past few weeks but I don't think I'm ready to work on a really big project like BRL-CAD on my own. I had a task to complete during GCI so I knew what I should do. But now, I'm on my own. I'm going to code some little tools with Qt and put them on Github.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:21):

Thanks, we try. It takes a team.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:23):

Are you GSoC eligible already? I wouldn't worry so much about Qt experience, demonstrating familiarity with BRL-CAD via patches is FAR more important to GSoC applications. There's a solid month before GSoC begins where you can research

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:23):

I'm still 16, I'm not eligible yet. but I can participate in GCI this year.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:28):

I suggest trying your hand at a mini task

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:28):

something that's bigger than a GCI task, but smaller than a GSoC project

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:29):

that'd make you super prepared for gci

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:32):

I could, But I don't know what I'm capable of doing, and I'm not familiar with all the tools in BRL-CAD yet (I'll try to get familiar)

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:33):

exactly the point -- the best way to get familiar is to actually try to do something specific

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:34):

I'll do some modeling tasks in GCI archive to get familiar.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:35):

it's far too complex, far too many undocumented features -- just exploring and browsing around aimlessly is a bad idea

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:35):

you did the tutorials?

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:36):

Yes, The 16 tutorials right?

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:36):

right

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:38):

I have a specific set of work related to that you could try that would be useful, helpful

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:38):

Or I can do the Qt tasks, From where I left.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:39):

you could model a box with rounded edges (and rounded corners)

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:39):

I don't know how

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:39):

that's what you'd work to figure out

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:40):

then after you figure out how, your next step would be to do the same with code

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:41):

I knew it's possible to model stuff in BRL-CAD via scripting but I haven't done anything like that yet.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:41):

that's what would make it a great little project

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:42):

it's not too hard, there are lots of places you can get help

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:42):

you can figure things out at your own pace

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:44):

that would be useful to development

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:46):

I could find some PDFs on brlcad website but I haven't found any other documentation about BRL-CAD and and it's features.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:46):

eh, the pdfs on the website is like 300 pages of documentation

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:47):

how much do you need? :)

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:48):

i'm (half) kidding. the docs aren't organized, they're all over the place. best starting point is probably http://write.flossmanuals.net/contributors-guide-to-brl-cad/

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:48):

That's I'm trying to say, Those aren't organized.

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:49):

I wish they are in HTML

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:49):

and show up when I search something about those on Google.

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:50):

Just found the discussion page on sourceforge (how I didn't see it bofore?)

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:51):

yep, we know it too ... someone needs to work on that

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:52):

you could help with that, write up how it should be organized

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:53):

Yea, I think I can design a new website with the content in the PDFs. Well-organized, Easy to find exactly what you want ( I have to find some help about this BTW)

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:54):

I can even make changes to keep it up to date and add new screenshots.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:55):

that's too much

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:55):

:wink:

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:55):

no seriously, website design is a whole separate topic -- the organization of the docs is a project all by itself

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:56):

because docs have to be mapped back to source code docs

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:56):

so, is it possible edit docs in flossmanuals?

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:56):

and the website maps back to a completely different repository, different issues

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:57):

you could, but you really don't need to... you just need to write down what the organization should be, how it should be structured -- like a table of contents or site map

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 02:57):

Yeah.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:58):

you can do that in a wiki page or a google doc or a text file

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 02:59):

keep it simple, then we can review and discuss -- point out the 100 other docs that need to be incorporated, etc

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 03:23):

BRL-CAD Documentation

01 Introduction to BRL-CAD
    Hisory
    Help & Documentation
        Where to find help
        How to report bugs
        Feature requests
        etc.
    Contributing
        How to contribute to BRL-CAD

02 Getting started with BRL-CAD
    Installing BRL-CAD
        On Windows
        On Mac
        On Linux
    Compiling BRL-CAD from source
        ...
    Introduction to Graphical User Interface

03 Tutorials
    Basic Tutorials
        (Like the 16 tutorials we did in GCI)
    Advanced Tutorials
    Link to external websites which provide tutorials

04 BRL-CAD Features
    List of features and how to use them
    ...
05 Development
    Developing BRL-CAD Applications
    Example Applications with Code

... ( I don't know much about other BRL-CAD features)

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 03:26):

Hope this is what you meant.

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 03:37):

something like that, yes -- but more detailed and no ...'s -- something that should take a day or three of effort

Sean (Feb 21 2018 at 03:38):

and ideally reconciled against all the docs we have in our repository, on the wiki, and in the compiled pdfs

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 03:39):

The existing documentation fit above categories, I just need to be more specific.

Naseef (Feb 21 2018 at 03:40):

I think a flow chart would be more helpful.

Aman Jain (Feb 22 2018 at 11:03):

Hello, I am Aman Jain and I am interested in Benchmark Performance Database and Materials Database project. I am familiar with the command line tools, shell scripting, c++ and web development. Can anyone guide me with the existing codebase or any resources that I need to study.

Aman Jain (Feb 22 2018 at 11:05):

Can someone tell me whether these projects are still available because now they are not available on website but they were available 1 week back.

Sean (Feb 22 2018 at 14:10):

@Aman Jain those projects were removed from our list of ideas of ideas because they have been worked on under gsoc a couple of times before (incompletely), so the information of existing codebases and resources are spread out. projects are not available or unavailable, we just give you ideas for projects and you come up with a project proposal. for those two in particular, they require more homework and effort on your part --
you'd need to start by going to http://brlcad.org/wiki/Google_Summer_of_Code/ and look at the past projects for each year, go through all years, find all the projects related to benchmarking and materials, read what happened, become familiar with their status, and then come up with a project from there. that is work only you can do, and that is on top of becoming familiar with how they fit in with BRL-CAD.

Sean (Feb 22 2018 at 14:13):

so yes, you can propose them, but it is going to take you some work. I would suggest your time is better spent researching and discussing other project areas that we're actively working on like anything related to performance, user interface, or core infrastructure.

Aman Jain (Feb 22 2018 at 21:26):

Thanks @Sean for making things clear and for your guidance. I will surely go through the projects and will let you know if I have any doubt

Sean (Feb 23 2018 at 01:26):

hopefully you'll let me know if you have questions too ;)

Naseef (Feb 23 2018 at 10:20):

and ideally reconciled against all the docs we have in our repository, on the wiki, and in the compiled pdfs

I can't, I don't know how.

Naseef (Feb 23 2018 at 10:28):

Well, I can spend more time viewing all the PDFs and categorizing and organizing them. But I don't have experience doing this.

Sean (Feb 24 2018 at 02:04):

that's the gist @Naseef ... it's nothing so complicated. it's like organizing your notes (or more like organizing someone else's papers), but basically come up with some useful categories (not too many, not too few) and writing down that X goes in group A and this section of the pdf goes in group B, etc

Naseef (Feb 24 2018 at 07:32):

So I have categorize every sections of every PDFs. I think I can do that.

Naseef (Mar 29 2018 at 06:41):

I was confused and gave up doing this, I'm starting over today. I'll finish it soon (hopefully)

Naseef (Mar 29 2018 at 06:42):

Just downloaded all the PDFs.

Naseef (Mar 29 2018 at 08:22):

Should we extract information from books and put them on Wiki?

Naseef (Mar 29 2018 at 08:35):

I'm learning a lot as I explore the documentation, It would've been really helpful if I found them during GCI.

Naseef (Mar 29 2018 at 09:54):

Home
    [__________________][Search]
        (I mean, A searchbar, on all pages)
    Documentation Index

Introduction
    What is BRL-CAD
    History

    Features Overview
        Features
        Screenshots & Renders

    Support
        Reporting bugs
        Feature requests
        Forum
        Mailing List

    Contributing
        How to contribute to BRL-CAD

Image Gallery

Getting Started
    Installation
        Download links
        Installing on Windows
        Installing on Linux
        Installing on Mac

    Building from source
        Obtaining sources via Subversion
        Running CMake
        Compiling
        Testing
        Installing

    Introduction to Graphical User Interface
        Using MGED
        Using Archer

BRL-CAD FAQ
MGED FAQ

Introduction to MGED
    Tutorials
        (Tutorials from the book)
    Object Editing
    MGED Commands
    MGED Quick Reference
    Shift Grips

Principles of Effective Modeling

Tutorials
    Modeling
        Vehicle Tire and Wheel Creation in BRL-CAD

    Scripting
        SGI Cube via shell scripting
        Spiral via Perl
        Cutting and Pating PIX files

    Rendering
        Animation
        Lighting
        Shaders
        Distributed Rendering
        Interactive ray tracing

    Importing Geometry
        Converting Geometry Between BRL-CAD and other Formats
        STEP2G
        Importing from Blender

    Primitive Tutorials
        Annotations
        2D Sketches
        3D Extrusions of 2D Sketches
        3D Revolutions of 2D Sketches
        Extruded bitmaps
        Displacement Maps (Heightfields)
        N-Manifold Geometry (Polygolan meshes)
        Volumetric data

Developing Applications
    An Introduction to Writing BRL-CAD Applications
    Example Programs
        rt_shootray()
        db_walk_tree()

BRL-CAD Core Interface Documentation
    API Reference

Third party projects
    Hex
    Project VeRDE

Contributing to BRL-CAD

Sean (Mar 30 2018 at 16:52):

I'm learning a lot as I explore the documentation, It would've been really helpful if I found them during GCI.

Like what? probably not. the books are in our repo and the plan is to merge the wiki and repo docs into one system.

Naseef (Mar 30 2018 at 18:57):

I'm talking about the tutorials on main page, I didn't see it during GCI.

Naseef (Mar 30 2018 at 19:06):

Is it possible to make MGED use my desktop theme? pasted image

Sean (Mar 31 2018 at 04:17):

not easily, no

Naseef (Mar 31 2018 at 10:46):

I think I've too much free time.
BRLCAD_Combination_Editor.png

Is possible to change the font at least? I think it can make a huge difference.

Sean (Apr 01 2018 at 13:04):

That looks great @Naseef what was the code change?

Sean (Apr 01 2018 at 13:06):

certainly can change the fonts. only question is how it behaves when the font is not there, and that the change is maintainable

Sean (Apr 01 2018 at 13:11):

Is it possible to make MGED use my desktop theme? pasted image

It's certainly possible, but I don't know the specific bits that would be needed. That's Tk configuration. A lot of the widgets and buttons directly specify a style so making them use a native desktop theme would probably require converting them to ttk widgets. Check "archer" out instead of mged -- that's where most of our current attention goes in terms of modernizing the GUI. Next after that will be redesigning the GUI in Qt where native is the default.

Sean (Apr 01 2018 at 13:12):

I'm talking about the tutorials on main page, I didn't see it during GCI.

Two of our GCI tasks were to do the tutorials -- they were some of the most-completed tasks so you must have just missed them. But agree, the website should make them more prominent.

Naseef (Apr 02 2018 at 07:28):

That was just a mockup I designed in Qt Creator.

Can't we just include an open font in the program? or find the default font of the operating system?

I've read that it's possible to theme Tk apps with TTk widgets. But it will be awesome if we could just recreate Archer with Qt5. I think we can reuse a lot of existing code, or translate them to fit Qt API. Not sure if everyone had this problem but I had to do something to get Qt apps to use my Gtk theme on Xubuntu 17.10, They looked "crappy" without the theme.

I didn't say it's the website's mistake, It's actually my mistake, I just wish I've seen it during GCI. But it could be the website's mistake ... :wink:

starseeker (Apr 06 2018 at 11:12):

For a start at an Archer-style interface in Qt, see https://sourceforge.net/p/brlcad/code/HEAD/tree/brlcad/branches/

starseeker (Apr 06 2018 at 11:13):

Or more specifically, https://sourceforge.net/p/brlcad/code/HEAD/tree/brlcad/branches/qtged/

Last updated: Feb 12 2025 at 00:46 UTC