Mail Archives: geda-user/2013/06/25/20:05:56
Markus Hitter wrote:
> That's pretty exactly the reason why I would prefer to use OpenSCAD
I looked a bit closer at openscad: The feature set seems to fit nicely
to what PCB needs. It is not just triangles but cuboids, sheres and cylinders.
OpenSCAD is not a "bag of triangles".
There is an import module for openscad. It acts on a flattened version
of the format with no loops and sub procedures:
http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=OpenSCAD_Module
Once in freecad, there is a bridge to STEP, IGES and the like.
The freecad module can export the flattened openscad format, too. I'd
expect parsing of this file to be straight forward.
This looks rather promissing. Unless I miss something, geda may be able
to tap the power of 3D with comparatively little effort. :-)
> or FreeCAD (with licensing resolved).
I also took a closer look at the licensing issue. Unlike I thought before,
GPLed applications can link to opencascade without legal problems. The
lagal fine print only strikes, when the application also links to some
other library which is licenses to GPL2. In essence, the open cascade
copyleft clashes with the stickyness of GPL2.
If I read the debian bug report correctly, they gave up on persuading
OPANCASCADE S.A. to dual license. Instead, the maintainers try to get
the other components relicensed. The main offendershave been cleared
(e.g. libcoin). But there are still some remnants. So there is hope
for convenient access to freecad, even if the S.A. stubbornly insists
on their special GPL-incompatible license.
---<)kaimartin(>---
--
Kai-Martin Knaak
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