kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Jon Neal <reportingsjr@xxxxxxxxx>]

My gut instinct would be to merge sooner so the number of changes is
smaller and bugs in the merged code can be more easily targeted.

I personally like smaller changes for stuff like this rather than humongous
all in one changes, but looking at the commit log I can see that not all
people agree with this. :)

Jon

On Tue, Dec 1, 2015 at 5:30 PM, Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Hi folks,
>
>  I'd like people's opinions on how to introduce the changes in the
> management of
> 3D models. The existing refactored code introduces the following:
>
> 1. configurable model filename resolution: this allows the user to have
> model files
> in different root paths, for example the model directory installed by
> kicad plus the
> user's own model directory + system-wide non-kicad model directory etc.
> This
> model resolution scheme also includes the current project directory in the
> search
> path for additional flexibility. The resolver paths can be configured via
> a GUI which
> is accessible from the File Browser.
>
> 2. 3D model parser plugin: the data for rendering a 3D view within kicad
> can now
> be managed by plugins. This allows the development/debugging of plugins
> without
> recompiling the bulk of kicad. In contrast the current system makes
> changes to
> the 3dviewer library which forces the re-linking of pcbnew and cvpcb while
> touching
> any related headers can force a broader recompile. It is possible to
> develop the
> plugins out-of-tree and versioning control can be used to ensure
> compatible APIs.
>
> 3. 3D model caching: model data can now be cached in a binary file format;
> this
> can speed up loading of some model types, for example any MCAD model which
> uses NURBS to describe surfaces. The cache can also write its data to a
> VRML2
> compliant file thus providing an automatic conversion from the plugin's
> model type
> to VRML.
>
> 4. Model preview: in the Footprint Properties dialogs you can see the 3D
> model in
> a window and interactively adjust the scale/offset/rotation parameters.
> The original
> concept was to provide a 3D preview within the File Selector dialog as
> well but
> that would require much more work (patching wxWindows + additional testing
> on
> Linux/MSWin/OSX) so I'll drop that idea.
>
> Ultimately 3Dviewer will be replaced by a new rendering system which Mario
> is
> working on and there will be great improvements in the maintainability of
> the code
> as the entire 3D rendering code is cleaned up and its entrails removed
> from other
> code such as MODULE. However, that it a large task and may not be ready for
> quite a few months. So I propose we take advantage of the current
> improvements
> by pulling in a subset of the new code. The code will provide everything
> listed
> above in 1-3 but will not yet provide the much desired removal of S3DMASTER
> from MODULE - that step depends on the rewriting of the Renderer. Part 4
> above
> depends on the implementation of working 3D parser plugins; this is a work
> in
> progress and it will take a few months to reimplement the existing X3D/VRML
> parsers as plugins.
>
> I estimate 2 or 3 weeks to prepare a branch to merge a subset of the
> existing
> code which will provide improved 3D file browsing. Model parsers are
> currently
> in development but should be ready in the first quarter of 2016.
>
> What do people think - should we introduce the current changes as soon as
> possible, providing improved browsing, or wait a few months so that we can
> include the preview window in the Footprint Properties dialogs?
>
> - Cirilo
>
>
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