01:18 <sidilakies> is it quiet here or is my computer connection failing

05:11 <J24k80> sidilakies it is quiet

07:27 <teepee> not so quiet at wikibooks though :)

07:31 <teepee> someone seems confused about the ordering of things in https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_User_Manual/Primitive_Solids#polyhedron

07:56 <J24k80> maybe explaining with the normal vector

07:57 <teepee> the confusion seems to be the unclear difference between a) list-of-points and list-of-faces versus b) list-of-points(pointindexes)-of-each-face

07:58 <J24k80> but it is funny how someone write text and obviously never checked if that would work -  it is not for making a thesis about how you think it could work

07:58 <teepee> a is not ordered, b is strictly ordered

07:59 <J24k80> »the point sequence for a face needs to be clockwise so the resulting normal vector is pointing outwards«

08:00 <teepee> I tried to explain it a bit more, but I'm not sure if it's now clear

08:00 <J24k80> maybe "clockwise" already is confusing as you can see this from the back

08:01 <J24k80> .. well i mean we have pictures - Ü

08:13 <teepee> by now I reverted twice and tried to explain better, lets see if we get a 3nd round :)

08:13 <teepee> ahem 3rd

10:50 <InPhase> teepee: I had to check the edit history to see the brewing confusion. :) But yeah, it's a notch better now after addressing that editor's confusion.

10:50 <InPhase> That's a confusing enough section that one should probably not be editing it to try to remove perceived contradictions until actually understanding the underlying requirement the hard way.

10:51 <InPhase> I made a number of edits to that section in the past. It has gone through a lot of evolution already.

10:53 <InPhase> I do notice that the word "arbitrary" was inserted initially by me, but within the list of each face was the intended meaning.

10:56 <InPhase> I think there was no logical ambiguity in "arbitrary which point you start with".

10:56 <InPhase> The "start with" carries a lot of weight. But I guess someone's brain latched onto "arbitrary" and didn't contextualize it, so pre-contexting it as you did is a bit better.

10:58 <InPhase> I was trying to avoid saying "periodic ordering" because this is not commonly understood jargon.

11:03 <InPhase> J24k80: And I never much liked the clockwise description there, which is why I added the right-hand rule which I think is easier to keep straight and work with. But I left the clockwise description because both are correct, and it doesn't hurt to have two equivalent descriptions for people to choose between. Someone confused by one phrasing can lean on the other, or can keep mentally poking at it

11:03 <InPhase> until both descriptions give them the same understanding, and then have confidence they got it.

11:09 <InPhase> Oh good grief. We still have a left hand rule in there in a different section from before I added the right hand rule. lol

11:09 <InPhase> Now THAT probably should not be there.

11:09 <InPhase> One does not need a right hand rule thumb in, and a left hand rule thumb out, even if these are equivalent.

11:10 <InPhase> There is an argument that this helps all the one handed people, but... I'm not sure if most other people are ready for these two alternate descriptions.

11:52 <Tom85> Hello everyone, I hope I came to the right place and that we can talk about OpenSCAD here. I have a question for you: which version of Qt is best to use for compiling OpenSCAD? If I'm not using this chat correctly, please let me know, as it's my first time using IRC.

12:02 <InPhase> Tom85: qt5 still works fine, but I think qt6 has been relatively recently supported.

12:02 <InPhase> I haven't personally tested qt6 yet.

12:09 <Tom85> Thank you for the information

13:06 <J24k80> InPhase .. we can intruduce the "Screw rule"  if points are used like a screw rotates the direction the screw moves is the normal which need to point outwards

13:09 <J24k80> so order the points as you would screw into that face

13:17 <Tom85> I have another question for you. I am writing a 3D application in which I need to have the ability to build/define 3D shapes. I really like the possibility of integrating OpenSCAD for this. Generally, I envision it like this: in my application, I have a SCAD code editor where the user writes code, then the code generates 3D shapes and displays them

13:17 <Tom85> in the application. However, I've encountered a few problems. Firstly, OpenSCAD cannot be compiled as a library, but that doesn't seem to be an issue. OpenSCAD can be run without a GUI and can generate shapes. The problem is that the compilation in OpenSCAD sometimes takes quite a long time. Before the actual shape is rendered, I would like to have

13:17 <Tom85> the possibility of displaying a "preview" of the shape. However, from what I see in the OpenSCAD CLI, there is no option to get a preview? I don't mean a preview as a .png image, but the shape that appears in the OpenSCAD rendering window after pressing the preview button.

13:29 <teepee> if you mean "export a preview" then yes, that's technically not possible

13:32 <Tom85> I mean, of course, the shape as an .stl or .obj file that the program generates as a 'preview' of the final rendering.

13:32 <teepee> well, strictly speaking it might be possible to export the low level data structure for preview so another application can render that itself

13:32 <teepee> *that* is actually impossible

13:33 <teepee> the whole point of preview is, there is no mesh representation available

13:41 <Tom85> I'm not sure if I understand correctly, so there isn't a mesh per se, but there are some vertex data since the application can render a preview, and that data could be exported?

13:45 <teepee> if you preview a difference of a cube and a sphere, there is only the meshes for a cube and the sphere

13:45 <teepee> there is no mesh that describes the actual difference of the two

13:45 <teepee> preview is clever display to make it look like the difference happened without actually calculating the vertices

13:48 <Tom85> Okay, I understand. So there must be some clever technique used there to give the impression that the shape is cut out. Well, that's interesting.

13:50 <teepee> https://opencsg.org/

13:53 <Tom85> Okay, tell me, does this have anything to do with those two classes, CGALRenderer.h and OpenCSGRenderer.h? Is the rendering context somehow switched here depending on whether it's for the actual rendering or the preview?

15:40 <Virindi> is there any way in openscad to measure the size of text?

15:43 <jan64> Yes, there is.

15:44 <jan64> https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_User_Manual/WIP/Text_Metrics

15:44 <Virindi> cool, I wish that was linked from the page on text :)

15:44 <Virindi> or the cheat sheet

15:46 <Virindi> ah, I guess it must be very new

15:50 <Virindi> really nice feature to have even if I have to turn it on in preferences :)

15:59 <Virindi> works great thanks :)

19:29 <teepee> fyi: GSoC: May 27 - Coding officially begins!

20:00 <gbruno> [github] martin-badin opened issue #5149 (Plan for next release) https://github.com/openscad/openscad/issues/5149

20:57 <gbruno> [github] t-paul closed issue #5149 (Plan for next release) https://github.com/openscad/openscad/issues/5149