Source CAD

From Zanecorpwiki

Similar to the way Firebug lets you select elements of the HTML and highlights the source, or vice versa, it would be nice to do the same with a CAD program. Select elements in the solid model, highlight the solid model code, or vice versa.

There is possibly a lot of value to be gained with an open source CAD (specifically mechanical CAD) program. Such as an approach as this could make the most of what's easy. OpenGL (Jaylon believes) has the facility to connect mouse location to solid objects rendering. It should be easy to tie that back to the source.

At the same time we avoid the thing's that would be hardest in a purely visual approach. Only scaling/zooming, selection and highlighting need be supported in the rendered/visual component. The actual rendering would always be directly from code.

None of this is to say that AutoCAD or others don't have this kind of functionality, the point is to say that this is emthe/em feature, and that really, with this at the core you could have a relatively simple program that was none-the-less very powerful.

History

Initially developed with Jaylon over lunch, 10/28/2008.