On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 6:28 PM, Ganeshram Iyer <[email protected]> wrote:
>> Defining the look/layout/feel for what a given 2D 'blueprint' might be >> like. What syntactic, semantic, pragmatic information could be and needs to >> be included? What would an example sheet look like (exact prototype >> mock-up)? Are there existing drafting document standards that we could >> conform to? Should we? What does STEP have to say about standard drawings >> and drafting formats? > > I will initially be looking to do the leg-work to research the standards, > current practices and competitors' approaches on how the 2D drawing > generator could/should be done. Well, as to standards, I can't say how useful they would be (if you can even get ahold of them) but it looks like parts of ISO 128 and other standards related to it probably apply: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_128 Unfortunately they're quite expensive, so it might be worth checking with a local university library or even local library system to see if they can track down copies. When it comes to the details of getting the actual 2-D lines from the 3D geometry, that topic has been the subject of some recent SIGGRAPH papers studying how artists depict 3-D shapes - their website has the articles: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/proj/ld3d/ There was also a very good SIGGRAPH class on lines from 3-D models: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/gfx/proj/sg08lines/ Actually generating the lines outlined in the above talks from our geometry is somewhat more specific to BRL-CAD's internals - we have some basic ability to generate a small subset of the lines described in the above talks but I'll defer to Sean on whether it would be better to examine that code first or "start clean", as it were. My vague notion would be to design some kind of library API around the line generation approaches outlined in the above papers/classes, and then build tools to generate actual drawings according to the standards using the drawing API, but as I am not in any sense familiar with the ISO standards or the low level details of generating the lines from the models those are just thoughts to be considered or rejected as more research defines the task and subtasks more clearly. As for more general "open source" work, I expect Sean has probably already given you good advice, but I'll add my two cents - commit early and often. Don't hold back everything until it's done - even partial efforts are often enough to inspire other people to contribute, and incremental progress towards the goal is worth preserving. We use the subversion software for version control, so basic familiarity with that will be helpful. Welcome to the project, and best of luck with your efforts! CY ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ BRL-CAD Developer mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/brlcad-devel
