[ale] BRL-CAD anyone?

[Charles Shapiro]

After a pretty decent struggle, I designed my first object with BRL-CAD
last week.  It's a 6-hour print, and I am currently on about hour 4.  So
far, so good!

-- CHS

On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 2:25 PM, Horkan Smith <ale at horkan.net> wrote:

> +1 for interest, but I haven't spent any time on it at all....
>
> On Fri, Nov 11, 2016 at 01:46:43PM -0500, Charles Shapiro wrote:
> > Anyone here familiar with BRL-CAD ( http://brlcad.org/ )  ? It's a
> pretty
> > interesting 3d-modeling software suite which is designed specifically for
> > CAD/CAM. That makes it different from and (I hope) better than things
> like
> > Blender ( http://blender.org)  and Artofillusion (
> http://artofillusion.org
> > ) for designing printed objects. It's a pretty simple install on my
> Debian
> > Jessie system. I haven't tried it on other distros. I believe it is
> > available for proprietary OSs but that is outside my expertise.
> >
> > This software was developed in the mid-'80's by the US Army, but only
> open
> > sourced in 2004. Amusingly enough, Mike Muus, the guy who headed the
> > development team, was also the first author of ping(1). The UI dates from
> > 1984, the documentation also. The result of this is that it is a
> > fantastically rich program with all kinds of nifty features accessed
> > through a command line with a creaky GUI built on top of it. The doc
> > devotes no less than 2 illustrations and 5 paragraphs to explain the zoom
> > feature, but is notably silent on important concepts like vectors,
> > vertices, and object trees. The web is also pretty silent on most
> specifics
> > (e.g "How do I rotate a shape in BRL-CAD?"). The extensive built-in
> > documentation often doesn't explain anything about command-line arguments
> > beyond their existence and function.  A glossary would be a huge step
> > forward for a n00b such as myself.
> >
> > I had a small breakthrough in understanding  last night and succeeded in
> > building a rough model of a "standard craft stick" (114.3 x 9.5 x 1.5
> mm).
> > It took me about 2 hours to grok some basic facts on how BRL-CAD works,
> > partly because I lack strong background in 3D design and partly because
> the
> > tutorial is heavily slanted toward buttonology.  The original GUI
> ("mged")
> > seems to require a 3-button mouse, but a later iteration ("arrow") is
> more
> > compatible with my current setup.The tutorial, of course, assumes the
> > former.
> >
> > Has anyone else tangled with this software? It seems really interesting
> but
> > somewhat difficult. Mastering it might be a Useful Life Skill for a
> > well-rounded 3D printing hacker.
> >
> > Heck, at the very worst it might make an innaresting ALE talk?
> > -- CHS
>
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>
> --
> Horkan Smith
> 678-777-3263 cell, ale at horkan.net
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