kicad-developers team mailing list archive

[Mário Luzeiro <mrluzeiro@xxxxx>]

About an year ago when I start thinking on 3dviewer refactoring, I was evaluating some VRML parsers / importer so I don't have to develop our own.. but I was not happy with any opensource solution.
VRML/X3D is a relative huge specification.. if supports scenes, animation, sounds, music, and so on
Most of the solutions would be an ugly dependency addition for the kicad source code.

Also, it is not just the parser, after getting the data we need, we have to convert it to our own (new) internal mesh format.
Depending on the implementation / format, we can do that conversion directly or indirectly to the internal format.

We (I) have some knowledge from previous experience in the VRML parser and we know the most common sources of VRML file formats, so I believe we can have a new parser that will become stable in a short time  == i.e. it will make happy all user situations we experienced so far/before.

Mario
________________________________________
From: Kicad-developers [kicad-developers-bounces+mrluzeiro=ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] on behalf of Cirilo Bernardo [cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: 05 January 2016 01:50
To: Chris Gagneraud
Cc: KiCad Developers
Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] support of 3D model plugins

On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 10:26 AM, Chris Gagneraud <chgans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:chgans@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Hi Cirilo,

Out of curiosity, are you using the OpenVRML parser framework for
VRML97 and VRML-encoded X3D files?
If not, any reason why?
FWIU, their implementation is template based and only depend on boost.
So theorically, this shouldn't add more dependencies to KiCAD.

As well concerning IFC/STEP any reason you didn't rely on assimp? (And
maybe improve their IFC/STEP implementation if needed)

Chris


Hi Chris,

 No I didn't use the OpenVRML parser because I did not know about it. I have an
aversion to anything with boost in it though and OpenVRML doesn't seem to have
been maintained since 2012. In this instance I think the compact VRML2 parser
which I created should be fine, especially since kicad only needs to support a
static scene. Implementing VRML1 shouldn't be difficult and for X3D I only need
to support whatever is in the legacy parser. Like VRML2, X3D supports scripting
and dynamic scenes and we do not need such support in kicad.

 Perhaps we can use Assimp to display STEP files one day - at <7MB it's not
such a heavy dependency.

- Cirilo


On 5 January 2016 at 09:33, Cirilo Bernardo <cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
> The code has already been tested with FreeCAD VRML models (which have a
> very strange construction) and has already been improved to work with the
> FreeCAD output. So at the moment it's VRML1 (high priority) and X3D which
> are missing. I also have plans now to support the VRML Inline { } feature
> used
> by the VRML exporter but the code I write will behave differently from the
> legacy
> code and instead be more compatible with other VRML viewers and the VRML
> specification. In particular, the legacy code uses a file name resolution
> scheme
> which is not conformant to VRML - this means that the legacy code may
> display a model which no other VRML viewer on the planet will display and
> the
> user of course may have the mistaken idea that their VRML output is OK when
> in fact it's not.
>
> - Cirilo
>
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2016 at 2:42 AM, easyw <easyw@xxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:easyw@xxxxxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
>>
>> and also I would suggest to check the compatibility with VRML format
>> coming from FreeCAD as it is fully compatible in the stable release...
>> A lot of users are already using FreeCAD as 3D modeler both for VRML and
>> MCAD models.
>>
>>
>> On 04/01/2016 14.20, Wayne Stambaugh wrote:
>>>
>>> I agree.  At a minimum, we should support the file formats that were
>>> supported before the refactor.  There may not be many folks using X3D
>>> but the few that are will not expect their X3D models to stop working.
>>> We should always strive to maintain backwards compatibility.
>>>
>>> On 1/4/2016 3:55 AM, Mário Luzeiro wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> As Bernhard pointed, when I added VRML1 support it was mainly because of
>>>> the 3D content central website.
>>>> Overall I think we should try to not make regressions and support at
>>>> least the same as it was before, otherwise people will not be able to see
>>>> their projects as it was before.
>>>>
>>>> X3D is an export options of Blender. I dont have knowledge of other
>>>> sources of X3D files.
>>>>
>>>> Mario Luzeiro
>>>>
>>>> ________________________________________
>>>> From: Kicad-developers
>>>> [kicad-developers-bounces+mrluzeiro=ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:ua.pt@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>] on behalf of
>>>> Cirilo Bernardo [cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:cirilo.bernardo@xxxxxxxxx>]
>>>> Sent: 04 January 2016 00:03
>>>> To: Wayne Stambaugh
>>>> Cc: KiCad Developers
>>>> Subject: Re: [Kicad-developers] support of 3D model plugins
>>>> "With the responses I've received I will implement a VRML1
>>>> parser as well but not an X3D parser (very few people use X3D and those
>>>> who do and responded told me that they can probably live without it)."
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