Hi,
I'm not sure if this discussion goes into the right direction. To
find out, I'll describe what's my understanding of annotations and its
consequences for a possible GSoC project:
The annotations are a very important step from a modeling system
toward a real CAD. They are not necessary to represent a real world
3D geometry in a computer but to give a design to a workshop,
construction site, etc.. Without some text explaining it they
wouldn't be able to build what was designed. This means, annotations
don't live in the 3D world but on the screen, paper, etc..
I.e.:
- Annotations can't be ray-traced. (In fact, if they would be visible
for rays they would disturb the usual analysis done with BRL-CAD.)
- Annotations have their own coordinate system on the device (screen,
paper, ...). If a letter is 5 mm high then these 5 mm are understood
as measured on the device.
Nevertheless, annotations have a reference point in the 3D space which
will be identified with a point in the 2D annotation coordinate
system.
The annotation primitive has to address these issues. Maybe the
sketch primitive could be used as a orientation when designing it.
The annotations display themselves in wireframe mode. They need to be
able to switch the coordinate system to display (or "paper")
coordinates to draw themselves. (In the future it could become
necessary to distinct between the viewing device and a blue-print
paper coordinate system.)
Regarding the 4 questions:
1): manual
2): 1
3): -
4): no
Additional features are desirable but without a reliable foundation
all is nothing.
Just my 2 ct.
Daniel
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