Port Request: OpenSCAD ($40/$80 starting bounty)

[monty]

Hello all,

I'm a long time Pandora owner, though I've found myself using it less and less for various reasons. I'm also founder of Bristol Braille Technology, which is a tiny start up not-for-profit making displays for blind people.

The one thing which has always been missing for me when trying to use the Pandora for work is the lack of CAD software. I have some pretty good CAD packages that I can emulate on DOSBox, but they don't cut it with compatibility & mouse control. Once upon a time compatibility wouldn't have been such an issue for me as I was pretty much working alone on my projects. But now BBT has gotten a bit bigger. There are real engineers working on it with me (I'm strictly an amateur in both senses of the word) & they've been making all our models in an amazing program called OpenSCAD.

OpenSCAD is based on a programming language. You don't edit the model directly, you recode it. Its both simple & very powerful. At the end is an example which draws an array of pins inside a block. It also has a clean interface; no cluter of menus & panels.

In other words, its very well suited to mechanical modelling on the Pandora, & would be indirectly helping us develop machines to improve literacy amongst blind & partially sighted people.

If someone can make a PND of OpenSCAD which is tailored for comfortable use on the Pandora---in other words, disable features it can't use, like OpenGL, make sure a few examples work OK & possibly put the editor & viewer in different windows so workspace is maximised--- then I'd be delighted to put in $40 of my own money as a starting bounty, & a thank you on the BBT web site to the porter. If this results in work being done on BBT projects from a Pandora where it otherwise wouldn't (which I expect it will) then BBT will match that bounty, albeit paid a little later.

Does anyone else have an interest in CAD? If so would you be willing to chip in too?

Thanks

Ed

radius = 0.7;
fn = 48;
min_height = 25;
block_width = 13;
for (i=[0:1:1]){
    for (j=[0, 2.5, 6.5, 9]){
        for (k=[0:1:2]){
            pin(j, (i*block_width) + j, k*2.5);
        }
    }
    translate([(i*block_width)-radius-1, -radius-1, 10]){
        cube([block_width+(radius*2)+2, 8.4, 10]);
    }
}
module pin(heightDiff, offsetX, offsetY){
    translate([offsetX, offsetY, -heightDiff]) {
        union() {
            cylinder(h=min_height + heightDiff, r=radius, $fn=fn);
            translate(v=[0, 0, min_height+heightDiff]) {
                sphere(r=radius, $fn=fn);
            }
        }
    }
}

 

[Binky]

disable features it can't use, like OpenGL,

It might be possible to use OGL|ES for some stuff - depending on specifics I don't understand... :rolleyes:

 

[ptitSeb]

I can try, but I already have a lot of ports going on, so I cannot promise I'll do that quickly, so if someone else want to do it first, no problem It's Qt4 based, no problem, but I see GLEW (not sure on how Qt4 with GLES will mix with GLEW, that probably means there is many OpenGL code inside), and there are meany librairies unknown to me (CGAL, OpenCGS, Eigen)...

 

[_wb_]

I'll give it a try - lots of dependencies, I can't promise anything.

 

[monty]

Wonderful. Thanks for giving it a shot.

 

[Franko]

I'm a part-time user of AutoCAD.  We use it at my work to plot out large-scale drawings for architects and engineers mostly.  I sometimes design stuff on my own though.  If a 2-D (or 3-D) version of some sort of CAD software were ported to the Pandora, I'd definitely be interested.  Ideally it would be more tailored to use on the Pandora, and without CUPS (and the accompanying printer drivers), it'd be good to have the options to export files as native CAD file formats.  Like dwg or dxf, etc...or at the very least a pdf file, so that I could print it to one of my plotters from another PC.  Count me in for $40 as well, if somebody can pull that one off.  

 

[Farox]

Some months ago i have builded LeoCAD http://www.leocad.org/trac and partially works but have some non functional parts like saving images produce empty files, plus sometimes

the app crash (i don't know why..).

I compiled with the old Codeblocks by ptitseb (the version of dec 2012 not the latest ) and it use the MesaGL included in this toolchain for rendering at a rasonable speed, so i think could try another build with the latest Codeblocks.

If someone want to try LeoCAD i can share a preliminary PND of this.

A shot of my version

 

[monty]

OpenSCAD outputs as STL, which is the 3D version of DXF. I gather its simple to export as plain DXF as well, but I haven't learnt that yet.

 

[Linux-SWAT]

I can try to compile it under Slackware if you're interested.

 

[monty]

@Linux-SWAT

I am interested! I should mention though that the bounty is specifically for a PND on Angstrom.

 

[_wb_]

I'm still trying to get it compiled. I compile on the Pandora itself, so things can take a while. The dependencies are OK (at least to the point that it wants to start compiling), so I hope to have a working version on my Pandora in the not too far future. Compilation is gonna take a while though: at first I had problems with gcc running out of RAM (apparently 512MB with some of it zram was not enough), so now I activated a swap partition. But of course compilation will be even slower now...

If and when I have a working version on my Pandora, it's "just" a matter of packaging.

 

[Franko]

^ Keep us apprised of your progress...and thanks for your efforts, _wb_!  Mucho appreciado.  Why am I talking in Spanish?  Many thanks!!! 

 

[_wb_]

I thought I got all dependencies right, but it looks like the dependency check script they included is a bit shallow... as in too optimistic. Spending some more time to get all dependencies right before I can continue the main compile. The thing does have a huge amount of deps, so this can take some time...

 

[Franko]

^ No worries.  It's not an immediate need, for me at least.  I can't speak for monty.  If you (or anyone) can pull this off though, I'd really be impressed and appreciative.  In more ways than one.  

Edit1:  I just reread this and laughed a bit at my own self...  That last sentence only referred to the previous bounty($) that I mentioned...LOL.   :lol:

 

[_wb_]

I'm getting there... it runs on my Pandora - no idea if it has all features it needs to have (probably not, it complains about needing OpenGL 2.0) and if it is behaving fully correctly (I did some nasty things like disabling checks that complain about stuff instead of trying to figure out why it complains and fixing it). But at least something seems to work.



Now it's only a matter of packaging the thing up in a PND. It's going to take some time and effort to make that work, with all those dependencies.

 

[jasay]

I'm getting there... it runs on my Pandora . . ..

Awesome.  Thanks for your work on this.  1/3 of tools needed for a full Pandora Reprap (open source 3D printer) toolchain.

 

[_wb_]

I uploaded a PND to the repo. Please give it a try!

I managed to keep the PND size small despite all the dependencies by only strictly including what is needed to get something running. I wouldn't be surprised if I forgot to include something...

 

[ptitSeb]

Well done _wb_ !

 

[_wb_]

I'm getting there... it runs on my Pandora . . ..

Awesome.  Thanks for your work on this.  1/3 of tools needed for a full Pandora Reprap (open source 3D printer) toolchain.

I'm curious: what is the remaining 2/3 ? Give me some pointers and I'll give it a go when I find the time!

If you have any suggestions on how to make OpenSCAD more Pandora-friendly, I'll see what I can do. Now it's just the normal interface; in my opinion this interface is nice enough, since it's quite clutter-free already. But I don't use this software myself, so I wouldn't know how to improve things.

As for the bounty: I didn't do this for the money - although I have to admit that it helped to motivate me to keep trying, not really because of the bounty itself but mostly because it indicates that some of you really want to get this piece of software working. So I'm not going to refuse the bounty, but I suggest you send it to EvilDragon as a PreOrder fund donation, and maybe EvilDragon could then transform 50% of the bounty to a voucher for me, to be added to my DragonBox coding compo voucher which I didn't use yet, but plan to use when the TV out cables are available to buy me a new Pandora and a cable (I'm waiting for the cables to save on shipping and because a second Pandora is not urgent). So in effect 50% of the bounty would go to me (as a DragonBox shop voucher), and 50% would go to the preorder fund.

That is, if the PND works well enough for you to reward me with the bounty

 

[jasay]

I'm getting there... it runs on my Pandora . . ..

Awesome.  Thanks for your work on this.  1/3 of tools needed for a full Pandora Reprap (open source 3D printer) toolchain.

I'm curious: what is the remaining 2/3 ? Give me some pointers and I'll give it a go when I find the time!

The three parts are model development, gcode generation, and printer interface.

There are several pieces of software that could be used for any step, but to keep things in line with open source I mostly use OpenSCAD, Slic3r, and Pronterface. 

As for the bounty, I wasn't one of the guys above, but between this, Microbes, and NubNub and I've meaning to send you a few bones for awhile (not sure what the best way to is)