Adding simple mechanic tags as a recommendation to standard
2014-11-17, 18:31 (This post was last modified: 2015-01-08, 23:47 by Ben Supnik.)
2014-11-17, 18:31 (This post was last modified: 2015-01-08, 23:47 by Ben Supnik.)
All,
I've spent quite a lot of time recently working on my webgl viewer/robot simulator. While creation on robot simulator targetted at children is my primary goal, I made ldraw viewer as it was neccessary to create rendering backend. I am not very good at creating objects in CAD, being rather a programmer. Frankly, I would not succeed without having such a great resource as ldraw.org library is. Thank you!
The reason I write here is because CAD files does not contain any hints about mechanical nature of models. While some movements are definetly too dificult to model with simple description language, there are plenty of situations which can be modelled by rotation/shift axis and min/max values for movement.
I tried to check other applications to figure out if there is any format that I could reuse for my needs. But I havn't found anything suitable. That is, my best understanding is that:
- ld4dstudio - uses information in higher-level files,
- ldcad - uses LDCAD-extensions (0 !LDCAD ... ) to define LDCAD-specific GROUP, plus lua language to control it,
- brigl - uses BRIGL-extensions to define animation (0 SIMPLEANIM )
- sr3d - seems to be most suitable, but I do not have sr3d license to try animation. As far as I understand new tags are added to describe scene.
- my viewer - added my-specific-extension to define engine rotation group, color/distance sensor position, and scene (0 MOTOR_AXLE), plus NXT-inspired graphical language to control (not really mature yet).
Not sure if this list is complete. My question is: is there interest to create common standart to define simple mechanics? Or at least: common groups that are connected without any movement possiblity?
For example:
- I would like to add something that could describe crane and wheels rotations to small crane model.
( for example: 4838 model. )
- I would like to add groups to techincs/mindstorms models that have gears: couple of groups with one control (+scale).
( for example: 8464 model )
- I would like to have mindstorms-engine part with description that some part of the model does rotations.
( for example: my industrial - the orange part of engine does not rotate )
- It could be nice to have minifig-rotations inside minifig models.
I have a feeling that instead of implementing my own-incompatible way, it could be reasonable to define some common standartized extension so each project could (at least: partially) reuse models created for other. Also, I do not want to implement CAD on my own.
I am looking forward for any feedback on this idea
Thank you,
Jakub
I've spent quite a lot of time recently working on my webgl viewer/robot simulator. While creation on robot simulator targetted at children is my primary goal, I made ldraw viewer as it was neccessary to create rendering backend. I am not very good at creating objects in CAD, being rather a programmer. Frankly, I would not succeed without having such a great resource as ldraw.org library is. Thank you!
The reason I write here is because CAD files does not contain any hints about mechanical nature of models. While some movements are definetly too dificult to model with simple description language, there are plenty of situations which can be modelled by rotation/shift axis and min/max values for movement.
I tried to check other applications to figure out if there is any format that I could reuse for my needs. But I havn't found anything suitable. That is, my best understanding is that:
- ld4dstudio - uses information in higher-level files,
- ldcad - uses LDCAD-extensions (0 !LDCAD ... ) to define LDCAD-specific GROUP, plus lua language to control it,
- brigl - uses BRIGL-extensions to define animation (0 SIMPLEANIM )
- sr3d - seems to be most suitable, but I do not have sr3d license to try animation. As far as I understand new tags are added to describe scene.
- my viewer - added my-specific-extension to define engine rotation group, color/distance sensor position, and scene (0 MOTOR_AXLE), plus NXT-inspired graphical language to control (not really mature yet).
Not sure if this list is complete. My question is: is there interest to create common standart to define simple mechanics? Or at least: common groups that are connected without any movement possiblity?
For example:
- I would like to add something that could describe crane and wheels rotations to small crane model.
( for example: 4838 model. )
- I would like to add groups to techincs/mindstorms models that have gears: couple of groups with one control (+scale).
( for example: 8464 model )
- I would like to have mindstorms-engine part with description that some part of the model does rotations.
( for example: my industrial - the orange part of engine does not rotate )
- It could be nice to have minifig-rotations inside minifig models.
I have a feeling that instead of implementing my own-incompatible way, it could be reasonable to define some common standartized extension so each project could (at least: partially) reuse models created for other. Also, I do not want to implement CAD on my own.
I am looking forward for any feedback on this idea
Thank you,
Jakub