Hi all,

It seems that the sketch support in BRL-CAD is very buggy or perhaps not
fully implemented... I would like to get an informed opinion on the
status quo.

While wrapping the Sketch/Extrude/Revolve primitives in python-brlcad, I
did some tests to understand how it works. The net result is that I
barely managed to get any of the sketches I created to properly extrude
or revolve...

For the Extrude part, after a quick code check I concluded that support
for NURB segments is not coded at all, they are simply ignored... also
the CARC segments are buggy, some work some not.

The Revolve primitive - I could not get it work with anything else than
line segments. Even with those I'm not sure what are the requirements
for the resulting shape to raytrace properly, for example it's not clear
what happens with points on the revolution axis. It seems that the first
and end points will be automatically closed with a disc even if they are
not on the axis.

Also some of the parameters are ignored, or at least it seems so, and
others I modified but the effects were not consistent...

I uploaded one of the tests I made, ray-trace revolve.s to see one of
the failures:

http://pastebin.com/kJppsgyK

Generally where can I find some documentation of how it works in
detail ?

In fact I would go further and ask if the existing primitives would
perhaps be enhanced by:

 * 3D path (to allow curves in space);

 * extrusion along a path -> this would cover both extrusion (linear
path) and revolution (circular arc);

It seems that other CAD projects implemented/discussed this:

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Tutorials/Modeling/Curves/Extrude_Along_Path

http://www.we-r-here.com/cad/tutorials/level_3/3-7a.htm

https://github.com/openscad/openscad/issues/114


So what is the status quo in this area ? Is there any existing effort
which is not already in the primitives code ?

Implementing some of this could be an interesting GSOC project too. I
would also like to have a stab at it but my attention is currently on
the python-brlcad project and time is limited...

Cheers,
Csaba



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