Quoting Vik Olliver <[log in to unmask]>:
> I'm wondering what sort of software is going to be used to operate the
> finished article. I'd like to suggest the GPL'd ArtOfIllusion as one
> potential candidate for the modelling aspect, as I've found it very
> flexible and capable of a variety of output formats. Might be a bit much
> for the initial work though.
This looks very promising - thanks. As you say it has all sorts of fancy stuff
we probably don't need, but that's better than missing something vital. I
can't find an STL export option (that may just be my stupidity), but even if it
isn't there that is not actually a big hurdle; all I need is a polygon mesh and
I can bolt on a bit of code to write that to an STL file, as long as it's fine
enough to approximate curves to within 0.05 of a unit (taking 1 unit = 1mm).
> I've done a little work on this kind of thing before, using the GPL'd
> scripted modeller Povray and boolean operations to produce "slices" of a
> model. I have also got a version of Povray that is patched to space-fill
> with pre-defined structures (I use it for molecular modelling). This
> approach might simplify initial development. Any interest?
May well be. We certainly need code to slice and hatch polyhedral solids; if
you have something in that area, that may well be very useful.
Thanks for the suggestions.
Yours
Adrian
http://staff.bath.ac.uk/ensab
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