libfive VS sdf

Guile/Scheme: https://libfive.com/

You probably have already seen this, but I would take a look at libfive for inspiration

https://libfive.com/

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

>these the the central core that understands BREP and implements the geometric operations.

I've seen people quote a good modern CAD kernal as a 100 man year project. It's probably not going to happen, maybe there's some avenue for government funding?

Alternatively Signed-Distance-Functions are pretty nice. They're not BREP, but they're a lot easier to implement, and it might be possible to shove them into a BREP-shaped hole.

Here's a signed-distance-function based CAD kernal written in a few thousand lines of python+numpy, that seems to be about as fast as openscad. Maybe faster. https://github.com/fogleman/sdf

Excellent. You might be interested in a Python library that I wrote for generating 3D meshes (STL files) from SDFs : https://github.com/fogleman/sdf

It just uses marching cubes for triangulation but the SDFs are all numpy'd and the SDF is evaluated in batches on multiple threads so it's relatively fast.

Try out fogleman/sdf[1]. It is like OpenSCAD in many ways but the distance field model gives you offsets and fillets more easily.

[1] https://github.com/fogleman/sdf

> Basic things like 'hollow this object out, leaving a 3mm shell' are nearly impossible.

Yeah, I think that's a consequence of how they're constructing the objects. But things like signed distance fields make that easier* because it'd just be "expand the SDF by 3mm" - https://github.com/fogleman/sdf has `shell` for this.

* if you can wrap your head around the math/geometry, I guess

> https://github.com/fogleman/sdf

Holy crap, why have I not seen this before?!?!!? I was even planning to start coding something like this myself. This is awesome!

> Which I reckon is me being too used to cli-tools and hardly ever going outside the cli world

You might get some mileage out of OpenSCAD if you can define your object parametrically (I used it to make a Switch controller middle-bit.) Or there's stuff like https://github.com/fogleman/sdf which I've used to make resin-printed buttons for my mother.

(I also cannot get the hang of Blender despite dipping into it for a couple of weeks every year since about 2013.)