JBrickBuilder connection model

[Ben Supnik]

1. Annotation of existing primitives with connectivity, e.g. if you use stud.dat, you get a male stud connector 'for free'.

This is nothing new, both SR3DBuidler as my own LDCad use this approach.

Good! I would love to see a connectivity spec built entirely out of already-proven ideas!

I still think describing shapes is the better approach for these kinds of things

Should we have a serious discussion of this?

Mind you this is a bit of a hijack or Mario's work! But it's sort of luck that he posted something that was complete and readable right as I was starting to dig into this again....

No offense to Mario, but his method is nothing new. If anyone should be credited for setting up the basics of connection handling it should be Sergio.

I'm not trying to claim that Mario was the first to design a connection model of this type. I am saying that I am hijacking his work in that he designed something, wrote a spec, posted it for feedback, and then I came along and started discussing it (1) in a bigger scope (e.g. for all of LDraw and not just his app) and (2) with additional functionality (supporting at least some physical operations and not just snapping).

We started talking about official connection models before on the forum, but for some reason it went nowhere every time. The main reason for that (i think) was people where afraid it would not be adopted by the tools. Even Sergio indicated he would never use it even if it became official. Something I did not really understand at the time. But now I also have my own format i kinda do, you own system just leaves more room to operate. On the other hand it would be very useful to use the default official info as the fallback or basis for snapping at least.

I think you are referring to the previous discussion where I was looking to build "related parts" (something we shipped in Bricksmith) and was shopping it around to see if anyone else was interested. At the time I wasn't pushing for connectivity because I didn't have time to get it done in Bricksmith - related parts is a much smaller, simpler feature (simpler than snapping by a lot).

Sergio was very generous in offering some kind of extract of SR3D connectivity data as a way to "seed" community data; his not wanting to redo his work was pretty understandable too!

At this point we are rapidly approaching at least four implementations of this feature (Sergios, yours, Henri's and Mario's). I always have the option to do a fifth with Bricksmith.

My thinking is that if I have to do the design work no matter what, if I can have the discussion with the community and incorporate other people's work, then it will be more likely that the end result will be something useful to multiple programs and not just Bricksmith-specific.

Cheers
Ben