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<jaredo>
has anyone here played with cascade studio, cad query or any of the other b-rep systems?
<jaredo>
the advantages are significant but it seems like the user base is nearly non-existent
<InPhase>
jaredo: I looked at cadquery in the past, and was not impressed with the usability. But I glanced at their docs again, and maybe it's getting a little better. They do seem to be working on it steadily. But they have not yet done a good job of a broadly accessible system yet.
<jaredo>
cad query seems to have been replaced by "build123d"
<jaredo>
I just found this
<InPhase>
When I look at those selectors for faces and edges and workspaces, I get the sense I could go through their API reference and figure that out for myself pretty quickly. But I also get the sense that the bulk of the userbase that uses OpenSCAD would be pretty confused by the syntactical approaches in cadquery, and would find the new user onboarding processes in their existing docs a little opaque.
<InPhase>
So I can understand a reduced uptake.
<InPhase>
One of the major potencies of OpenSCAD is one of the same things that Python itself has. OpenSCAD is easy access for complete beginners to programming, but also scales up to some pretty decent professional level use.
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<InPhase>
cadquery looks like it probably has some advantages for professional level use in at least certain shapes (I haven't dug into it enough to know how flexible it is in a more general sense, or where its weaknesses arise). But with it currently lacking in beginner accessibility, it doesn't actually tap into any of the advantages that they seemed to be aiming for with a Python base.
<InPhase>
Furthermore there has always been a reduced shareability intrinsic to sharing models built in a general purpose programming language due to security issues. This is really not something suitable for casual use.
<jaredo>
the only issue I have with openscad so far is filleting. its quite painful, even with the round anything library.
<jaredo>
other than that, openscad is amazing
<InPhase>
jaredo: I acknowledge a possibility that maybe they found solutions already to everything in my critique and I just don't know those solutions exist. But those are my first impressions, and I wouldn't be surprised if others had similar first impressions. So I guess it's on the people in that project to present and explain the solutions to those issues. :)
<jaredo>
the round anything library actually crashes openscad for me quite a lot
<InPhase>
jaredo: In release or master?
<jaredo>
release
<InPhase>
Did you test master?
<jaredo>
wait no, master
<jaredo>
sorry yeah
<jaredo>
both
<InPhase>
Ok.
<InPhase>
Like out of memory crashing?
<InPhase>
I'm not aware of any other kind of crashing happening in both release and master.
<InPhase>
We tend to fix crashes.
<InPhase>
Out of memory is, well, sort of the user's problem.
<jaredo>
it just freezes any time I mistype a variable
<jaredo>
without round-anything, I would normally get an error
<InPhase>
Did you make an issue for that with a reliable testcase? It sounds strange.
<jaredo>
nah. I just figure it's an issue with round-anything. I'm going to stop using it.
<jaredo>
I never had any issues without it
<InPhase>
Well no library should be able to freeze OpenSCAD.
<InPhase>
That would be out-of-spec behavior for OpenSCAD.
<jaredo>
honestly making fillets myself was easier anyway, although I appreciate the effort of all the folks that worked on it
<InPhase>
Oh, do you mean you mistype a variable and then preview or render and then it freezes?
<jaredo>
yeah
<jaredo>
it's probably busy and will eventually fix itself but I am impatient
<jaredo>
my models are very simple
<InPhase>
Ah. Yeah. I think that's not an issue with round-anything, but with undef propagation and the heavy computations round-anything does to do "anything".
<jaredo>
oh
<jaredo>
ok
<InPhase>
Propagating undefined variables is, unfortunately, ridiculously slow.
<InPhase>
And so if you feed them into a super heavy calculation, it's just going to take annoyingly long.
<InPhase>
Which is part of why I don't use round-anything in the first place. The generalized solutions are much slower than the design-specific customized solutions.