Photo beads with OpenSCAD

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Tim
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Tim » Mon Apr 28, 2014 3:30 am

I know of at least five people who have promised "I'll just clean up this code and. . .". And I have yet to get code from any of them. The best thing you can do is just to put it out there. If it's useful, people will use it. If it's broken, somebody will fix it. Anyway, I'm interested. . .

Toby
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Toby » Mon Apr 28, 2014 3:49 am

Tim wrote:I know of at least five people who have promised "I'll just clean up this code and. . .". And I have yet to get code from any of them. The best thing you can do is just to put it out there. If it's useful, people will use it. If it's broken, somebody will fix it. Anyway, I'm interested. . .
Nah, you can count on me. The "clean up" is something I've been meaning to do for a while. This is good motivation. I have a short list and I'm not going to get obsessive. But some things... well, I do have my standards.

Ditto for the docs. I would like you guys to give it a fair try and maybe entice you into writing code for it. I don't want to throw something at you that has undocumented, hidden keyboard commands needed to do the first thing you want to do. Trust me it will still be quirky enough after the cleanup to require a certain amount of say, tolerance, on your part.

jsc
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by jsc » Mon Apr 28, 2014 5:42 am

How did your crease pattern generator ever work out, by the way? Does it help with origami?

Toby
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Toby » Mon Apr 28, 2014 6:23 am

jsc wrote:How did your crease pattern generator ever work out, by the way? Does it help with origami?
For printing out crease patterns it didn't go very far. As soon as the designs got beyond the simple stage it didn't help with folding paper. Each crease had to be reinforced by hand and there were just too many and they were too small.

The only marginally interesting thing I was able to do with it was print out a five-fold "twist" pattern and use that to fold some paper. What makes that interesting is that trying to find the reference point for a pentagonal pattern by hand folding is rather difficult and makes a mess of the paper you're doing it with. By having all reference points built into the crease pattern model I could get a clean fold. Here's a pic of the crease pattern model and what I folded with it.
5_fold.JPG
5_fold.JPG (47.65 KiB) Viewed 12305 times
Things got more interesting when I started adding software to fold the crease pattern in the computer. I got somewhere with that and I'm still toying with the idea of using the algorithm to generate 3d models of origami objects and then print them out. More than one way to slay the origami cat with a 3d printer!

Toby
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Toby » Tue Apr 29, 2014 8:22 pm

I'm just about done with "TobyCad v0.1". I've never released software as open source before- do you guys have any opinions about the different licenses? With no knowledge at all, I'd go with whatever the latest version of GPL is.

Also, what's the recommended way of including the license in the code? I have two directories and about a dozen source files all told.

Of course I couldn't resist adding a bunch more features. It was touch-and-go there for a while- I thought I'd have to eat my words about "just a quick cleanup, no problem." But it seems stable again and all I'm doing now is the last little documentation. I should be able to upload it tonight when I get back home.

Toby
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Toby » Wed Apr 30, 2014 3:49 am

Here's the software in a zip package. To install it just unzip and place the main directory anywhere you like. Inside it is the file Cad2D.html. Click on it and the progrm should open in your browser as a web page.

The first hurdle will be any cross browser/OS issues that may arise. I've only tested it on Chrome running in Windows. If all goes well you should get a screen that looks something like this:
TobyCad.PNG
full screen mode in Chrome with plugins installed
TobyCad.PNG (23.59 KiB) Viewed 12294 times
If it's nothing like this let me know. If the sizes of windows and fonts aren't right, you can adjust them. Click on the Settings menu. It's not implemented interactively yet, but it will tell you where to go in the source to change the sizes of things.

The message on the right hand side of the screen is intended to get you going. It only comes up the first time you run the software. After than you can see it again by clicking "Help". In general, you can get documentation for any menu by right-clicking on it. (Or equivalent on a Mac, hopefully.)

Let me know if it seems to be working, or not.

You'll want to load the plugins at some point. To do that, click on the Plugin menu and navigate to the Plugin directory, then click on the individual files. Once loaded you won't need to load them again.

Get acquainted with the software and if you want to delve deeper I recommend writing your own plugin. That part is not documented except in the examples, but it's not hard and I can walk you through the process. That's the best way to learn what this software is really useful for.

Edit: Fixed confusing Save menu behavior.
Last edited by Toby on Sun May 04, 2014 3:31 pm, edited 3 times in total.

jsc
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by jsc » Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:25 am

I don't see any buttons below "Plugins" down the left hand side. Is that normal? I can't make out the labels in your screenshot.

Toby
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Toby » Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:30 am

jsc wrote:I don't see any buttons below "Plugins" down the left hand side. Is that normal? I can't make out the labels in your screenshot.
Yes, those are the plugins I've included. They need to be loaded (once) by you on your computer. Click on the Plugin menu and navigate to the Plugin directory (under Cad2D), then click on the individual files there. They should load and the menus should appear below the Plugin menu.

Toby
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Toby » Wed Apr 30, 2014 4:49 am

I just realized the "Save" button behaves in a confusing way. If you want to Save your work to disk, use "ctrl-s" or "ctrl-click" on the menu. If you just click on Save (or hit 's') you'll be saving only the current selection, and that probably won't make much sense.

Right click on "Save" and it will give some more information about what it's doing.

I'll fix it so clicking on "Save" does more what you would expect it to.

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Tim
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Re: Photo beads with OpenSCAD

Post by Tim » Tue May 06, 2014 2:08 pm

Obviously procrastination is not helpful. I was very busy over the past week and didn't download the zip file, and now it is nowhere to be found! Not sure why it disappeared, but, Toby, can you please re-post it? Thanks!

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