kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Mário Luzeiro <mrluzeiro@xxxxx>]

Hi Cirilo,

> As for disabling emission, specular reflection, and diffuse reflection, I would not do that.
> If the model looks ugly then people should fix the model. Breaking software to make ugly
> models look prettier is not a good thing. Maybe you can add an option so that you can
> disable these or (default) leave them enabled. 

I agree with you, but since I was not familiar with kicad menus options and such things I is a missing feature. I believe a new dialogue options just for rendering stuff.
Maybe someone with knowledge in wxWidgets / KiCad can do it very quickly.

> I will have a look at your changes and see how the VRML exporter can benefit from it.
> I always wanted to embed each model into the exported VRML since that would give a single
> file to share with people. It's not so simple of course since ideally the models should
> be assigned a definition so that they can be reused, otherwise the file grows very quickly.

You are mixing two subjects here. Let me clarify.
Right now, VRML exporter will not benefit with this new additions. (unless you plan to implement a RAW mesh exporter to VRML file).
And VRML exporter should work same way as before, it will add a link to the external file where it have components.

> In the past the 3D view code did not support the reuse of objects so something like a
> DIP or SOIC needed to define all the pins rather than reusing a single pin definition which
> is translated and rotated.

I didn't implement the "USE" key word for mesh data :/
I only keep the "USE" key word use for material. It should be easy to implement the "USE" for mesh data as well. I didn't implement it because I was just following "specific formats": 3dContentCentral VRML 1, FreeCad VRML 2, Blender x3d?, Wings3d VRML 2.

That software examples only use a subset of the VRML format, I agree that If other features was implemented in VRML 2 format it would be easier to hand create new components (it have keywords to make simple objects like boxes, cylinders, spheres, ..etc) it should be now easier to add this features, any way, keep in mind that if you will in future read this VRML with an external editor (Blender.. etc) it may not support that keywords.

Cheers,
Mario Luzeiro