truck VS manim

I agree 100%.

Truck[1] and Fornjot[2] are recent attempts in the Rust space, both are WIP.

But both seem to be going the traditional way. I.e. B-Rep that can be converted to (trimmed) NURBS.

I think if one wanted to incorporate the last 50 years of computer science, particularly computer graphics, one needed to broaden the feature set considerably.

You need support for precision subdivision surface modeling with variable radius creases (either via reverse subdivision where you make sure the limit surface pass through given constraints or using an interpolating subivision scheme that but has the same perks as e.g. Catmull-Clark).

Then you need to have SDF modeling ofc.

Possibly point based representations. If only as inputs.

And traditional B-Rep.

Finally, the kernel should be able to go back and forth lossless between these representations wherever possible.

And everything must be node-based, like e.g. Houdini. Completely non-destructive.

[1] https://github.com/ricosjp/truck

[2] https://github.com/hannobraun/fornjot

I think you confuse the book/tutorial with the documentation on docs.rs.

My impression is that the former is very much a work in progress. I never looked at it until now.

The latter (and the examples in the resp. crates) is what you want to look at to see the kernel being used. E.g. https://github.com/ricosjp/truck/blob/master/truck-modeling/...

The main README has links to all the documentation of the crates.

There are two Rust projects working on parametric kernels I'm aware of.

The first one, Truck[1] seems to have a company behind it, Ricos Ltd, that look like they to know what they're doing[2]. The tweet shows their product using functionality from Truck (the frontend is not OSS AFAIK).

Fornjot is an ambitious project IMHO. Their kernel is in a separate crate[3].

As for OSS code that could be a good base to either use (or port to something like Rust) for someone to write their own kernel is Ayam [4], the oldest OSS 3D NURBS modeler that is still being developed.

[1] https://github.com/ricosjp/truck

[2] https://twitter.com/RICOS_ltd/status/1550390552482693120

[3] https://crates.io/crates/fj-kernel

[4] https://ayam.sourceforge.net/

I've been following your project with interest and was wondering if you were familiar with Truck. Its another project implementing a CAD kernel in Rust.

I will definitely keep reading and learning, as well as gaining practical implementation experience. We'll have to see how that goes, and what the solution will end up being.

> Another direction you could take is to define just the API, and use the opencascade kernel (like FreeCAD) until the rest of your code is ready.

A CAD kernel is the central dependency for any CAD program, and I feel that it would be wrong to just use one and accept its limitations. I need to be able to take ownership, to work on it directly. OpenCASCADE is a huge pile of C++ code, which is the opposite of all that. (Not saying it's wrong to use in general, just that I'm the wrong guy to work on a huge pile of C++ code.)

I've considered using Truck[1], but decided not to do that for now. I really want to see what I can come up with. If that doesn't work out, at least I'll be in a much better decision to decide what other option would be best.

[1] https://github.com/ricosjp/truck

For a specific example: I am interested in working with 3D objects using Rust (maybe this is too ambitious for a newbie!) so I found a CAD kernel crate called truck which seems to be crate built of smaller crates and implementations of other libraries. How would you go about finding the most relevant info and where to start? Should I start by understanding all the smaller parts such as the gui/gpu rendering modules, or is that irrelevant and I can focus on figuring out the top level?

Also check out community edition: https://www.manim.community

manim – A community-maintained Python framework for creating mathematical animations

I recently wanted to make something similar and I completely fell in love with https://www.manim.community/ created by 3B1B.

https://github.com/gumyr/build123d :

> Build123d is a python-based, parametric, boundary representation (BREP) modeling framework for 2D and 3D CAD. It's built on the Open Cascade geometric kernel and allows for the creation of complex models using a simple and intuitive python syntax. Build123d can be used to create models for 3D printing, CNC machining, laser cutting, and other manufacturing processes. Models can be exported to a wide variety of popular CAD tools such as FreeCAD and SolidWorks.

> Build123d could be considered as an evolution of CadQuery where the somewhat restrictive Fluent API (method chaining) is replaced with stateful context managers* - e.g. with blocks - thus enabling the full python toolbox: for loops, references to objects, object sorting and filtering, etc.*

"Build123d: A Python CAD programming library" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37576296

BREP: Boundary representation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boundary_representation

Manim, Blender, PhysX, o3de, [FEM, CFD, [thermal, fluidic,] engineering]: https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim/issues/3362

NURBS: Non-Uniform Rational B-Splines: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-uniform_rational_B-spline

NURBS for COMPAS: https://github.com/gramaziokohler/compas_nurbs :

> This package is inspired by the NURBS-Python package, however uses a NumPy-based backend for better performance.

> Curve, and Surface are non-uniform non-rational B-Spline geometries (NUBS), RationalCurve, and RationalSurface are non-uniform rational B-Spline Geometries (NURBS). They all built upon the class BSpline. Coordinates have to be in 3D space (x, y, z)

test_curve.py, test_surface.py

https://github.com/compas-dev

compas_rhino, compas_blender

Blender docs > Modeling Surfaces; NURBs implementation, limits, challenges:

A template language that I wrote for generating HTML. Meant to be included as a C++ library. https://github.com/Ghoti-io/Tang

Plenty of other C++ code of mine is on Github (such as a bunch of utility stuff, a thread pool, and a HTTP server that I'm writing from scratch), even though I would only call myself an intermediate C++ programmer. I just happen to like the language.

Or, if I had to throw other stuff into the mix, a fairly recent patch to Manim (Python) that got accepted (https://github.com/ManimCommunity/manim/pull/3155).

If I were really pressed, I would dig up a lot of my Drupal (PHP) stuff that I did years ago.

I would love to have this https://github.com/manimCommunity/manim written in Rust. There have been previous attempts (bevy_manim and another one using nannou) but all of them are outdated