Last week Paula, Matthias, and I met to brainstorm a tadcad + dynamic drafting paper mashup. The idea was that tadcad focused mainly on extrusion and 3D binary operations while dynamic drafter paper focused on drawing on 2D surfaces. However, most CAD software uses these two modes in tandem, e.g. drawing a "floor plan" on an initial ground plane, then extruding it to create new faces, then drawing on these new planes, then extruding these, etc.
We talked through how Paula's laser pointer holder could be created in such a system. A common theme was that CAD is often about getting things to fit together. For this purpose, CAD in the world could use a connected ruler/calipers to measure the real world objects you are trying to fit to. For example, Paula's laser pointer holder required 3 measurements: the maximum width of the pointer (top hole), the smaller tip width (bottom hole), and a height (rough measurement a bit over halfway up the pointer).
This project will probably get going once we have more of the room system in place and Paula finishes another iteration on Ometropolis, so like April or May.
Next steps include:
- Talking through another example (maybe Dany's book scanner)
- Doing a video prototype
- Discussing a grammar of actions (extrude, revolve, boolean operations, drawing operations, etc)
- Discussing how lower level primitives are constructed and then used (for example, defining press fit joinery within the system and then using that to construct e.g. shelves at a higher abstraction level)