Pythonocc-nodes-for-Ryven Alternatives

Pythonocc-nodes-for-Ryven reviews and mentions

• Show HN: Flyde – an open-source visual programming language
  12 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Mar 2024

  As a visual person (traditionally trained as a graphic artist), I've wanted this sort of thing for a long while, and I've been trying to use it for 3D.

  Surprisingly, there are multiple specialized tools for this:

  - https://www.blockscad3d.com --- an adaptation of Google's Blockly to OpenSCAD

  - https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor --- wires and nodes, it has the advantage of exposing _all_ of OpenSCAD's commands (the above has a subset)

  - https://github.com/Tanneguydv/Pythonocc-nodes-for-Ryven --- a module for using PythonOCC in Ryven --- when I finally succeeded, I found the language inscrutable, even when provided w/ quite nice examples (definitely a failing on my part, not that of the tool)

  - https://github.com/graphscad/graphscad --- it took a long while for the source code for this to be made available, and for a while it had compatibility problems (why was "cube" redefined?) --- probably defunct for political reasons, it had some interesting ideas, in particular the ability to have custom icons for modules

  - https://www.nodebox.net --- if memory serves I got hung up by not easily being able to do 3D, and when doing 2D having precision problems (or maybe that was Processing.org)

  and I've been using these tools to make various things:

  https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/3d-project

  (and maybe eventually I'll finish something)

  The problem I've been running into is there doesn't seem to be an answer to the question:

  "What does an algorithm look like?"

  I recently had occasion to mention Herman Hesse's _The Glass Bead Game_ (also published as _Magister Ludi_) and I'll bring it up again --- what is a meaningful graphical representation of a program?

  The Drakon folks argued that there should be one true path but that's not really communicative and I would note that if this was a simple thing it wouldn't be decades since I last saw a physical Flowcharting Template:

  https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object-groups/flo...

  (and it's pretty rare to even see a well-done electronic drawing of a flowchart since Visio made its splash and vanished into the bowels of Microsoft)

  The main problem seems to be one of expressiveness not scaling up well, hence:

  https://blueprintsfromhell.tumblr.com/

  https://scriptsofanotherdimension.tumblr.com/

  Presumably, one doesn't want to define modules/variables unnecessarily --- but the question becomes where is that boundary?

  If you define too many, then you're back to the "wall of text" which one was trying to avoid (but wrapped up in nice boxes with some lines or shapes), and if one doesn't use them (well, look at the pretty/awful images in the links above).

  Ideally, a well-coded visual program would have a pleasing aesthetic appearance which is expressive and communicates flow and function, and I've tried for that at:

  https://willadams.gitbook.io/design-into-3d/programming

  (though I wish that there was an easy way to export an SVG version of a program)

  I believe that what is needed here is some graphical equivalent to Literate Programming: http://literateprogramming.com

  Is there a nice GUI toolkit integration which would allow making a graphical application with this? I have an idea I want to try it which might be a good fit.

• Parametric for the win... until it isn't.
  3 projects | /r/openscad | 14 Nov 2022
• Ask HN: Visualizing software designs, especially of large systems (if at all)?
  20 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 May 2022

  "What does an algorithm look like?"

  I'm an intensely visual person, but have never found a visual programming system which scales well --- the problem is, past a certain level of complexity one has to use modules, which then devolves the visual representation down to just a bunch named blocks.

  That said, I'm using BlockSCAD:

  https://www.blockscad3d.com/community/projects/1421975

  to work up designs which I'm then putting into other tools.

  Looking at GraphSCAD:

  http://graphscad.blogspot.com

  and there's also Ryven and pythonocc which I managed to get installed:

  https://ryven.org

  https://github.com/Tanneguydv/Pythonocc-nodes-for-Ryven

  but I'd really like to see a tool for this sort of thing which made G-code.

• Finally managed to get PythonOCC Nodes for Ryven installed (on Windows --- will have to try again for Ubuntu) --- here are my notes
  1 project | /r/parametric_design | 2 Feb 2022
• What is the one feature that would get you to try a new CAD software?
  2 projects | /r/cad | 14 Jan 2022
• A note from our sponsor - InfluxDB
  www.influxdata.com | 23 Apr 2024

  Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality. Learn more →