kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo_bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----

> From: jp charras <jp.charras@xxxxxxxxxx>
> To: kicad-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Cc: 
> Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2014 6:21 AM
> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] proposed changes to S3D_MASTER to accommodate other 3D model types
> 
> Le 23/01/2014 08:41, Cirilo Bernardo a écrit :
>>  Hi folks,
>> 
>>  It is fairly easy to use the existing scheme of 3D model selection
>>  for including other types of 3D models such as IDF and STEP; such
>>  models may be of no interest to the 3D viewer but are useful for
>>  other exporters such as the IDF exporter currently in development and
>>  the STEP model support which I still dream of.
>> 
>>  To support the specification of various models, I propose to make
>>  some changes to S3D_MASTER including:
>> 
>>  1. introduction of an Is3DType() to determine if any particular
>>  consumer is interested in the model referred to by m_Shape3DName.  In
>>  the case of the 3D viewer any file which does not have a wrl or x3d
>>  extension is ignored, but for other exporters such as the VRML and
>>  IDF exporters, the export routines must check that the name refers to
>>  a type of model which they are capable of handling.
>> 
>>  2. The Is3DType() function relies on an internal flag being reset
>>  whenever the file name (m_Shape3DName) is changed. It would be crazy
>>  to keep track of all code which changed the name as the code evolves,
>>  so I propose using accessor functions to set and get the model
>>  filename. There are very few places in code where m_Shape3DName is
>>  accessed, so this is not a big job.
> 
> Sounds good.
> 
> Not sure a flag is needed.
> Is3DType() could just test on the fly the file name extension.
> The calculation time has no matter in this case.
> 
>> 
>>  Those are all the changes required to support IDFv3 component models
>>  (and other mechanical models in the future). I have working code on
>>  my local branch which implements (1) but I wanted some feedback
>>  before proceeding with (2).
>> 
>>  Improving the IDF code by adding component footprint models will
>>  allow people who need to interact with mechanical designers to
>>  provide an IDF description of the board mechanics; from the
>>  mechanical modeling point of view this is superior to the current
>>  method used by people which is to convert a VRML model into a solid
>>  model through a variety of steps.
>> 
>>  Any comments/suggestions?
>> 
>>  Regards, Cirilo
> 
> Thanks.
> 
> -- 
> Jean-Pierre CHARRAS
> 
> 



Thanks Jean-Pierre,

 I had already coded the Is3DType() so I left it as it was; one advantage is
that wrl and x3d files are represented by the type S3D_MASTER::FILE3D_VRML
so this saves 2 extension comparisons. The type can also be compared to
S3D_MASTER::FILE3D_UNKNOWN to see if the file extension is not currently

recognized. Since the extra enum in S3D_MASTER is such a small overhead I
retained the implementation I had.

Regards,
Cirilo