sdf VS BOSL2

I used to like OpenSCAD for its simple approach but then I discovered SDF-based modelling with Python made possible with this neat library: [1]. This is perfect if you are a programmer that doesn't know anything about CAD-Software.

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

>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.

I used the SDF repo by Michael Fogleman. Check out his website, there's a ton of useful stuff on there. He contributes a lot to the open source community and has been mentioned in r/PlotterArt before.

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

https://github.com/fogleman/sdf this python project can create mesh from sdf

> 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!

The BOSL2 equivalent is https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki/CheatSheet

I used the BOSL2 library for the threads. Much easier that way!

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5905001 - Thanks to BOSL2, once I've defined a few constant, the entire source code is one (long) line:

I was heading down this path, but stumbled across this library that has a TON of really great functions: BOSL2. Lot's of useful stuff here and not just strings and math. I used format_fixed() to solve my problem. It doesn't seem to accept math functions in the call, but that is easily solved with an intermediate variable.

It won't be easy, but try using this: https://github.com/revarbat/BOSL2/wiki/beziers.scad

BOSL2 has a function for bending a polyhedron around a given radius but it's one of those functions that are super powerful but not very clear about how to use effectively (maybe that's just me).