Dear OpenFlipper maintainers,
Are there any plans to eventually support also DXF as an I/O file format in OpenFlipper?
I understand that this is just the question for somebody to write a corresponding plugin. After having successfully compiled and built the OpenFlipper sources from SVN, I could even imagine to write and contribute some basic support myself, at least as far as my own interest in that format goes: supporting plain triangulated meshes without any further "decorations" like normals, textures etc. I would use for that purpose the DIME library (open source, rather old, but still doing its job so far...) which I changed so far that it now works with double numbers instead of float only internally. I guess that this would be a question of a few more hours to get that running on my computer.
Much more of a problem I see in the integration into the OpenFlipper system: How to handle the extra DIME library? How to integrate all that license stuff properly? How to tell that fabulours CMake system that there is now another library to take care of? etc. etc. And since I am having absolutely no clue about that CMake magic, nor with these license subtleties, I would spend probably much more time with these issues than with the actual implementation of the DXF plugin!
Bottom line: from my part, I have no objections against integrating any such DXF plugin into the main OpenFlipper project, but I see many technical and understanding problems on my side in terms of realizing such an integration properly! An alternative for me only would of course be to build such an extension to the OpenFlipper only for myself and my colleagues, for our own work.
Regards, Cornelis Bockemühl
_____________________
Cornelis Bockemühl Holcim Group Support Ltd Cement Manufacturing Services Materials Technology Reserve Evaluation and Quarry Planning Im Schachen CH-5113 Holderbank Phone +41 58 858 51 30 Fax +41 58 858 51 51 cornelis.bockemuehl@holcim.com www.holcim.com
Holcim – 100 years of Strength. Performance. Passion.
This e-mail is confidential and intended only for the use of the above named addressee. If you have received this e-mail in error, please delete it immediately and notify us by e-mail or telephone.
Hi,
currently there are no plans to write an dxf plugin. But of course we would like to integrate that functionality in OpenFlipper. Maybe i can help you to integrate the libraries and do the cmake stuff so that you can just use them.
Can you provide a link, where i can download the library? I a a bit confused as most links seem to link to Coin3d. Has the library been renamed?
Best, Jan Möbius
On 05.11.2012 09:51, cornelis.bockemuehl@holcim.com wrote:
Dear OpenFlipper maintainers,
Are there any plans to eventually support also DXF as an I/O file format in OpenFlipper?
I understand that this is just the question for somebody to write a corresponding plugin. After having successfully compiled and built the OpenFlipper sources from SVN, I could even imagine to write and contribute some basic support myself, at least as far as my own interest in that format goes: supporting plain triangulated meshes without any further "decorations" like normals, textures etc. I would use for that purpose the DIME library (open source, rather old, but still doing its job so far...) which I changed so far that it now works with double numbers instead of float only internally. I guess that this would be a question of a few more hours to get that running on my computer.
Much more of a problem I see in the integration into the OpenFlipper system: How to handle the extra DIME library? How to integrate all that license stuff properly? How to tell that fabulours CMake system that there is now another library to take care of? etc. etc. And since I am having absolutely no clue about that CMake magic, nor with these license subtleties, I would spend probably much more time with these issues than with the actual implementation of the DXF plugin!
Bottom line: from my part, I have no objections against integrating any such DXF plugin into the main OpenFlipper project, but I see many technical and understanding problems on my side in terms of realizing such an integration properly! An alternative for me only would of course be to build such an extension to the OpenFlipper only for myself and my colleagues, for our own work.
Regards, Cornelis Bockemühl
Cornelis Bockemühl Holcim Group Support Ltd Cement Manufacturing Services Materials Technology Reserve Evaluation and Quarry Planning Im Schachen CH-5113 Holderbank Phone +41 58 858 51 30 Fax +41 58 858 51 51 cornelis.bockemuehl@holcim.com www.holcim.com
Holcim – 100 years of Strength. Performance. Passion.
This e-mail is confidential and intended only for the use of the above named addressee. If you have received this e-mail in error, please delete it immediately and notify us by e-mail or telephone.
Openflipper mailing list Openflipper@lists.rwth-aachen.de http://mailman.rwth-aachen.de/mailman/listinfo/openflipper
The DIME library we are also using in the context of Coin3d, and to me it looks like it is either coming from that "kitchen", or it is even older and they integrated it. The home page of DIME that is given in our readme is http://www.sim.no/dime, but that link leads now to some general Kongsberg Oil&Gas Technologies web page. It is to say that some years ago, this company has actually bought SIM, including the maintenance of Coin3d and DIME.
Now one year ago (on 01-11-2011), we received a mail from them, announcing "end of life" for Coin3d as a commercial product. I assume that this includes also the DIME library, but it is to say that so far Coin3d and DIME came with both a commercial license (with some support) and an Open Source license, so they will not be "lost" for that reason; only the support will be discontinued.
Right now, if you go for http://www.coin3d.org, you will be redirected to some BitBucket web page with some explanations about the Coin3d status. And then, finally, at https://bitbucket.org/Coin3D/dime, I find the current location of the DIME project, as some kind of sub-project of the Coin3d. However, this code is still all working with float numbers, not with double: I so far never fed this change back into the main repository!
For the moment I propose that I first try to get something running on my own computer. Even if it is not too difficult, it may still take some moment, because I intend to do that "beside" my official work. Then we may continue talking about how to integrate this DXF plugin and the updated DIME library back into the OpenFlipper project!
Regards, Cornelis Bockemühl
PS: End of life message for Coin3d:
"""" Dear Coin3D user,
Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies AS (“KOGT”) regretfully informs that Coin3D will be discontinued as a commercial product. The revenue has been decreasing and is not sufficient to maintain the product you expect and deserve.
Our decision is to start the End Of Life (“EOL”) process for Coin3D. Effective immediately we are no longer renewing Coin3D PEL subscriptions.
We recognize that Coin3D is an important tool for you and your business, and we wish to minimize the negative impact of the EOL. Professional Edition License ("PEL") holders are permitted by the PEL to continue using the last publicly available version of Coin for as long as they desire, and GPL users are of course free to continue using and contributing to Coin3D under the GPL. However, we fear that the GPL and PEL dual licensing scheme will be detrimental to the overall Coin3D user community since the two licenses hinder free collaboration and sharing. In order to support a strong Coin3D community and facilitate free collaboration and sharing, we intend to:
1. Move the Coin3D source code and home page to an independent hosting service such as e.g. BitBucket 2. Re-license Coin3D under the BSD 3 clause license 3. Act as maintainer and gate keeper of the source code for 3 months after the re-licensing 4. Invite some of the most active users to take over the maintainer and gate keeper roles 5. Provide support to PEL holders until their subscriptions expire
We will make a new announcement with the details of the EOL process as soon as the practical issues have been sorted out. We thank you all for the cooperation we have had over the years since Coin3D was first released in 1998, and apologize for the inconvenience the EOL process may cause you.
Best Regards, ---------------------------------- Lars-Erik Svabø Product Line Manager - Simulation Software Simulation Business Unit Kongsberg Oil & Gas Technologies
E-mail: eol@sim.no www.kongsberg.com/kogt """"
_____________________
Cornelis Bockemühl Holcim Group Support Ltd Cement Manufacturing Services Materials Technology Reserve Evaluation and Quarry Planning Im Schachen CH-5113 Holderbank Phone +41 58 858 51 30 Fax +41 58 858 51 51 cornelis.bockemuehl@holcim.com www.holcim.com
Holcim – 100 years of Strength. Performance. Passion.
This e-mail is confidential and intended only for the use of the above named addressee. If you have received this e-mail in error, please delete it immediately and notify us by e-mail or telephone.
Dear Jan Möbius & other OpenFlipper team,
That OpenFlipper source code comes in such an organized way that it was much less of a pain to get it compiling - and finally even adding another plugin for DXF I/O: It was a question of some train trips to/from my work to get it running!
Now for me and my colleagues the OpenFlipper is doing exactly what we want (which is much less than the OpenFlipper can actually do):
- Read a topographic surface as a triangluar mesh from a DXF file
- Reduce the number of triangles with the Decimater, and check the result with Mesh Compare
- Write the result back to a DXF file, with enough precision so that coordinates in the millions of meters are still good down to cm level
Now as I said already, I would like to feed this added plugin back into the OpenFlipper project - if this is welcome! This would include making a slightly adapted DIME library also part of the OpenFlipper project. But the point is that I am not at all familiar with the CMake system, so I just added the DIME library by first compiling it as a LIB separately, then added it to the DXF file plugin not from CMake, but only in the Visual Studio, after having generated the project with CMake. Which means: With a new CMake run, the DIME linking will have disappeared! So if somebody wants to do this job more seriously, I would love to send all my sources (including adapted DIME) for integrating into the "official" SVN and CMake system.
Some technical remarks:
DIME library ==========
Initially this worked internally only with float, but they were defined with typedef as dxfdouble, so just changing this typedef already switched the library to using double - except that still a few occurrencies had to be fixed where this concept was not really followed 100%.
Furthermore I added a "precision" parameter to the output class that works in much the same way as it is now introduced in the OpenFlipper system. Before the format was fixed with 3 decimals after the point, unchangeably, but I actually like the concept that is now in OpenFlipper, because it allows everybody, from the km to the nm modeller, to become happy in his/her own way!
Although it is technically possible to also use the DIME library as a DLL, I decided to statically link it into the DXF plugin. However, I have no objections if somebody would change this.
File DXF plugin =============
This plugin reads triangulated meshes, and nothing else. All other information that may be included in the DXF file will be simply ignored, like colors, polylines, points, texts, whatever... Furthermore it relies on the capabilities of the DIME library. This is just a word of cautiousness: The DXF format has been updated during the years, features added etc. etc., while the DIME library is already pretty old. I can say that we are using it in our company for many years already and mostly we were happy with the results, but I would not exclude cases where some features may not be recognized because they are too recent.
On the other hand, the DIME library reads much more than just triangle meshes from the DXF file, so if somebody wants to add more, like supporting colors or other geometric features, it is not a big thing to add this as well to the plugin, with little extra effort.
The plugin has one output parameter that can be set by the user: precision. As I found out that the ImportT/ExportT template classes are actually changing the internal double precision of data to float, I decided not to use them (although I have learned from reading in other file plugins that they are the intended way for generating/exporting geometry data).
Regards - and thanks to all the contributers to the entire OpenFlipper software: I really like it very much! Cornelis Bockemühl
PS: If this is welcome, I propose to simply zip the adapted DIME sources and the DXF plugin sources into two packages and send it to whoever is ready to take care for their integration into the OpenFlipper project SVN!
_____________________
Cornelis Bockemühl Holcim Group Support Ltd Cement Manufacturing Services Materials Technology Reserve Evaluation and Quarry Planning Im Schachen CH-5113 Holderbank Phone +41 58 858 51 30 Fax +41 58 858 51 51 cornelis.bockemuehl@holcim.com www.holcim.com
Holcim – 100 years of Strength. Performance. Passion.
This e-mail is confidential and intended only for the use of the above named addressee. If you have received this e-mail in error, please delete it immediately and notify us by e-mail or telephone.
Hi,
we are definitely interested in the code. You can directly send it to my mail address (or if it's to large, i can provide you an upload slot on our servers). Best would be, if you include the modified DIME library.
I also added a feature request to our tracking system that will monitor the progress (#1247).
Best, Jan Möbius
On 09.11.2012 09:18, cornelis.bockemuehl@holcim.com wrote:
Dear Jan Möbius & other OpenFlipper team,
That OpenFlipper source code comes in such an organized way that it was much less of a pain to get it compiling - and finally even adding another plugin for DXF I/O: It was a question of some train trips to/from my work to get it running!
Now for me and my colleagues the OpenFlipper is doing exactly what we want (which is much less than the OpenFlipper can actually do):
Read a topographic surface as a triangluar mesh from a DXF file
Reduce the number of triangles with the Decimater, and check the result
with Mesh Compare
- Write the result back to a DXF file, with enough precision so that
coordinates in the millions of meters are still good down to cm level
Now as I said already, I would like to feed this added plugin back into the OpenFlipper project - if this is welcome! This would include making a slightly adapted DIME library also part of the OpenFlipper project. But the point is that I am not at all familiar with the CMake system, so I just added the DIME library by first compiling it as a LIB separately, then added it to the DXF file plugin not from CMake, but only in the Visual Studio, after having generated the project with CMake. Which means: With a new CMake run, the DIME linking will have disappeared! So if somebody wants to do this job more seriously, I would love to send all my sources (including adapted DIME) for integrating into the "official" SVN and CMake system.
Some technical remarks:
DIME library
Initially this worked internally only with float, but they were defined with typedef as dxfdouble, so just changing this typedef already switched the library to using double - except that still a few occurrencies had to be fixed where this concept was not really followed 100%.
Furthermore I added a "precision" parameter to the output class that works in much the same way as it is now introduced in the OpenFlipper system. Before the format was fixed with 3 decimals after the point, unchangeably, but I actually like the concept that is now in OpenFlipper, because it allows everybody, from the km to the nm modeller, to become happy in his/her own way!
Although it is technically possible to also use the DIME library as a DLL, I decided to statically link it into the DXF plugin. However, I have no objections if somebody would change this.
File DXF plugin
This plugin reads triangulated meshes, and nothing else. All other information that may be included in the DXF file will be simply ignored, like colors, polylines, points, texts, whatever... Furthermore it relies on the capabilities of the DIME library. This is just a word of cautiousness: The DXF format has been updated during the years, features added etc. etc., while the DIME library is already pretty old. I can say that we are using it in our company for many years already and mostly we were happy with the results, but I would not exclude cases where some features may not be recognized because they are too recent.
On the other hand, the DIME library reads much more than just triangle meshes from the DXF file, so if somebody wants to add more, like supporting colors or other geometric features, it is not a big thing to add this as well to the plugin, with little extra effort.
The plugin has one output parameter that can be set by the user: precision. As I found out that the ImportT/ExportT template classes are actually changing the internal double precision of data to float, I decided not to use them (although I have learned from reading in other file plugins that they are the intended way for generating/exporting geometry data).
Regards - and thanks to all the contributers to the entire OpenFlipper software: I really like it very much! Cornelis Bockemühl
PS: If this is welcome, I propose to simply zip the adapted DIME sources and the DXF plugin sources into two packages and send it to whoever is ready to take care for their integration into the OpenFlipper project SVN!
Cornelis Bockemühl Holcim Group Support Ltd Cement Manufacturing Services Materials Technology Reserve Evaluation and Quarry Planning Im Schachen CH-5113 Holderbank Phone +41 58 858 51 30 Fax +41 58 858 51 51 cornelis.bockemuehl@holcim.com www.holcim.com
Holcim – 100 years of Strength. Performance. Passion.
This e-mail is confidential and intended only for the use of the above named addressee. If you have received this e-mail in error, please delete it immediately and notify us by e-mail or telephone.
Openflipper mailing list Openflipper@lists.rwth-aachen.de http://mailman.rwth-aachen.de/mailman/listinfo/openflipper
openflipper@lists.rwth-aachen.de
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cornelis.bockemuehl＠holcim.com -
Jan Möbius