libfive VS jupyter-cadquery

No; Bauble doesn't know how to "rasterize" SDFs into meshes; it only knows how to raymarch them. It's theoretically possible, but it's a pretty complex problem that would take me much too long to figure out and implement. So Bauble is relegated to just making pretty pictures for now. If you want to produce meshes using SDFs, check out https://libfive.com/

This is a mid-point in Matt Keeter's research.

Start at:

http://mattkeeter.com/research/thesis.pdf

then see:

http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/kokopelli/

then Antimony (see the article at: http://hackaday.com/2015/05/29/otherworldy-cad-software-hail... ), then the current effort:

https://github.com/libfive/libfive

(and also see: https://www.gitlab.com/kavalogic-inc/tovero "a binding of Libfive to Common Lisp, including a standalone REPL-based viewer"[https://github.com/Irev-Dev/curated-code-cad] can be integrated with https://www.gitlab.com/kavalogic-inc/clive

Currently I'm using OpenSCAD (w/ BlockSCAD as a front-end: https://www.blockscad3d.com because I prefer a sort of visual representation), but have been stymied by the lack of file I/O (I want to write out G-code).

Still looking for a 3D modeling tool which is:

- a node or block editor

From another random git commit I found it it seems the project moved to being hosted on gitlab.com under the account name "kavalogic-inc" but all the repos got deleted: - https://gitlab.com/kavalogic-inc

A recent question on AutoCAD lisp pointed to the libfive C++ library with C bindings. It's GitHub page points to the Tovero 3D Modeling system (link on Gitlab). That project is not found on Gitlab.

Or https://libfive.com/, which is less clunky (but no longer OpenSCAD-based).

I thought that early on, and looked (several times!) for something else besides OpenSCAD that would fill the bill (i.e. language-based CAD). There were some dozen projects, and most of them had been abandoned. The closest I got was in using libfive, an f-rep system with a binding to Scheme. But it was too easy for me to cause it to put out no shape at all, and to take a long time doing it.

> Couldn't you equivalently use any STL/STEP/AMF viewer?

I'm not sure. A quick feedback loop is important. With OpenSCAD and CadQuery, you write code that defines the geometry. You then want to see what the geometry looks like, and possibly debug it. For this, you generally want to be able to give certain parts a different color, or opacity, wireframe, etc.

STL is out; it has to tessellate geometry turning it into triangles. AFAIK, it only supports one object. This means a sensible wireframe is out, and so are multiple parts. AMF has similar drawbacks. STEP files might work.

Generally, my understanding is many people write OpenSCAD code in their editor of choice, and then simply save the file. When you open an existing file in OpenSCAD GUI, it monitors it for changes, and refreshes. So this is great.

That said, I misspoke a bit. CQ-Editor is definitely somewhat close to OpenSCAD. It still has a - in my view - unnecessary code editor. But the last standalone release is over a year ago, and I found it to be extremely buggy on macOS. It crashes quite often. Meanwhile, Jupyer-CadQuery [0] works great.

> Seems a good choice to me that the GUI is a separate/subordinate project. I suppose it is somewhat necessary to have it at all, easier to gain popularity if you can show screenshots and have a single app 'quickstart'.

Generally, I think this is true. My personal opinion is I can be productive with something that has a minimal set of features but is rock-solid; over something that has gobs of features but is buggy. That was my main issue with FreeCAD. Ease of installation is another big one. For all it's issues, OpenSCAD gets both of these things right.

[0] https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery/

Yep. I currently use https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery; it is a jupyter-based notebook integrating cadquery. If you can do it with OpenSCAD you can do it with cadquery, the difference being working with real CAD primitives, a richer language and more features. If you do not need some of the more advanced operators which are missing in the internal CAD engine it is a very solid choice in my opinion for parametric modelling at its peak.

yes thats the one. the python version is easier to work with imho, you can set it up with jupyter-cadquery + anaconda (https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery) and generate results in the browser / vscode . depending on your understanding of python it shouldnt be too difficult, you probably cant take it across directly but a lot of the default values etc should transfer. and the rest just requires looking at existing code + cadquery documentation.

One day I'll finish my keyboard using joshreve's framework, It definitely is a way better experience when doing lots of changes, especially with (https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery)

customising my own version similar to dactyl tracer and I'm using joshreve's port to python ( https://github.com/joshreve/dactyl-keyboard ) with jupyter cadquery (https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery), which lets you customise/generate your keyboard in the browser and view the output more easily, after which you can export straight to stl (https://imgur.com/a/HX0DLxw)

This one uses JupyterLab as a frontend for CadQueury, a porcedural CAD system.

https://github.com/bernhard-42/jupyter-cadquery