Talk:Creating primitive objects

Why I created this article

I initially set out to revise the introductory section of the BRL-CAD Primitives article, which used to briefly discuss the various ways MGED provides for creating such objects. I was thinking I would flesh out that discussion and also talk about how the properties of such objects can be viewed and edited. But I decided that information would make that intro way too long and in any event properly belonged in separate articles. So I moved the information on creating primitives here, renamed the articles on viewing and editing them so all three titles are grammatically consistent (turning the old titles into redirects), substituted links to them into the primitives article, and went to work on all three.

As for my changes to the primitive creation information that I moved here:

• My experience with the Create command is that it never displays the Primitive Editor dialog box. So I removed the claim that "When an object is selected from the create menu, you are prompted for a name, and then dropped into the primitive editor form; however, if the object type has no form, create will do about the same as make." Instead, I noted that make and create do essentially the same thing, and are usually immediately followed by editing of the created object. If that's wrong, I would really appreciate being told why create doesn't open the Primitive Editor when I use it.

• I also removed the parenthetical "are there any other ways" comment in favor of mentioning object importing and using the TCL put command. If I learn of any other methods, I'll add mentions of them too.

Instead of putting examples in this article, I'm planning to add them to the descriptions of the various types of primitives and add appropriate links here. That will probably make that article too long, so I suspect I'll split it up at some point (assuming no one objects too strenuously).

JoelDBenson (talk) 21:09, 27 May 2013 (UTC)

I certainly don't object. Make it better. :)

Your notion of what you observed about Create and make essentially being the same thing is accurate. I think the original writing was perhaps not being precise or, quite possibly, the code has simply changed since it was written.

You may also want to look at much of the very new content created by our participation in the Google Code-In project where many of the completed tasks were helpful documentation: http://www.google-melange.com/gci/org/google/gci2012/brlcad

Much of that will eventually find its way onto our wiki (or already has), into our XML documentation sources, and integrated with our other content.

Sean (talk) 11:37, 31 May 2013 (UTC)