[Bf-committers] CAD/Robotics extensions to Blender (Was Re: CVS commit: editobject.c)

[Herman Bruyninckx]

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004, Douglas Toltzman wrote:

> I don't speak for Ton, or the Blender Foundation, but this sounds like a
> good candidate for a code split.  I'd love to have and use a CAD-like
> version of Blender, but I cannot see a blending of the current Blender
> paradigm and features with a mechanical modeling tool.  The user interface
> would become cluttered and the application would probably become bloated.

I don't think so: our goals require no real new UI screens of windows:
we could add some more algorithms for the IPO without fundamental
changes to the IPO; we could add functionality to the IK without
fundamental changes to the meaning and the API; we could add some
functionality to armature building, without fundamentally changing it; etc.

> I don't believe you can be all things to all people and still perform any
> one function really well.
That's true in general, but robotics and computer animation have "lots"
in common, certainly in their motion and 3D visualisation aspects.

> Although I'd vote for a separate source tree for the CAD modeler, 
What are the current possibilities to have this kind of things as "plug
ins"?

> I'd ask that the file format remain compatible between the two so one
> could model different parts of the same project in the modeler that
> best suited the part being modeled.
I agree.

Herman

-- 
   K.U.Leuven, Mechanical Engineering, Robotics Research Group
<http://people.mech.kuleuven.ac.be/~bruyninc> Tel: +32 16 322480