On 9/22/2014 5:37 PM, Cirilo Bernardo wrote: >> ________________________________ >> From: Carl Poirier <[email protected]> >> To: Cirilo Bernardo <[email protected]> >> Cc: KiCad Developers <[email protected]> >> Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 7:23 AM >> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] 3d models in .pretty repositories? >> >> >> >> 3D models could be retrieved only as needed, like footprints. I don't see >> how this would be more polluting than in kicad-library which is installed >> locally. >> >> >> I know the github plugin serves only footprints. That's why I wonder how >> hard it would be to adapt it. >> > > > The issue is how to adapt things so that they are useful and not make the code > unmaintainable. If 3D models are to be retrieved from the network then this > will touch the 3Dviewer, VRML exporter, and in the future the IDF exporter; no > one wants to maintain network related code in all these tools. > So first of all we need to abstract things so that at least these 3 tools > are not really aware that they are performing a network access - so I would > look into abstracting the file loading operation and investigate if it is > possible to do this for the current footprint code as well as the VRML and IDF > code. To speed up operation it would be good to create local copies as data is > downloaded and this local cache must be checked before downloading a model on > the network - once again this can be done via a file loading abstraction. > It would also be good to check md5 hashes of the data and allow the users to > update a model if desired. > > This file loading abstraction might also serve eeschema in the future for > accessing schematic symbol files. I think that doing a good job of > implementing > 3d model downloads via the net is not a small job. Although a quick hack will > not be that difficult I don't believe it would be maintainable either, > especially > not as tools using 3d models are added in the future; I don't think anyone > wants to create yet another refactoring job. > > - Cirilo
I do not support the idea of saving models in pretty libraries. I also reject the idea of using PCB_IO for loading 3D models. I do support the idea of abstracting out any useful low level code from the IO_MGR object to create an I/O architecture for 3D models or any other place where it makes sense. 3D model I/O and footprint library I/O are not interchangeable and I do not want the 3D I/O polluting the footprint I/O code. I know that Tom has proposed a plug in model that may serve this purpose as well. I don't know if he has made any progress on this front. At some point the IO_MGR concept will be used for schematics and component libraries. I believe I added this development road map Wayne _______________________________________________ Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers Post to : [email protected] Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~kicad-developers More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
