Community Publication Portal
Welcome to the BRL-CAD community publication portal. This page is dedicated to the preparation and editing of BRL-CAD announcements. Proposed and upcoming topics are listed. Anyone is welcome and encouraged to share news about any activity related to BRL-CAD. Community editing and review are encouraged.
Contents
- 1 Ready for Publication
- 2 Final Editorial Review
- 3 Initial Drafts
- 3.1 Anurag Murty: Voxelizing Geoemtry
- 3.2 Cristina Precup: Visualizing Directed Acyclic Graphs
- 3.3 Ksenija Slivko: Reducing Code
- 3.4 Laijiren: NURBS Tessellation: What, Why, How?
- 3.5 Suryajith Chillara: Benchmark Performance Database
- 3.6 Wu Jianbang: NURBS surface-surface intersections
- 3.7 Andrei Popescu: Network Performance Testing
- 3.8 Chris Dueck: Calculating 2D Sketch Surface Area
- 3.9 Cliff Yapp: NURBS Ray Tracing in BRL-CAD
- 3.10 Erik Greenwald: Bolting ADRT's libtie under the hood
- 4 Idea Hopper
- 4.1 BRL-CAD's Evolutionary API
- 4.2 Introduction to new .deb and .rpm builds
- 4.3 2010 End Of Year Review
- 4.4 Erik Greenwald: ADRT/ISST Visualization
- 4.5 Bob Parker: Alpha Archer: Working Towards Next Generation MGED
- 4.6 Finding the Hot Spots
- 4.7 Point Clouds
- 4.8 bn_mat_inv: singular matrix
- 4.9 Model Showcase: Goliath
- 4.10 Model Showcase: Chumaciera
- 4.11 Model Showcase: Proyecto Catapulta
- 4.12 Model Showcase: Union Coupling Tool
- 4.13 Geometry Service FAQ
- 4.14 BRL-CAD's 3rd Generation Build System
- 4.15 BRL-CAD's Open Source Vision
- 4.16 BRL-CAD Primitives Showcase
- 4.17 BRL-CAD Geometry Converter Showcase
- 4.18 Release Schedule
- 4.19 RTGL
- 4.20 BRL-CAD Quick Reference Card
- 4.21 BRL-CAD Bibliography
- 4.22 Revolve Primitive
- 4.23 Parametrics and Constraints
- 4.24 Converting Implicit to Explicit: CSG to BREP NURBS
- 4.25 Online Model Repository
- 4.26 Project Statistics for 2010
- 4.27 Next Generation BRL-CAD
Formatting & Editing Standards:
- Quotations are italicized and placed between double quotes ( "Like This" ).
- AA (All Acronyms) need to be defined upon first use, don't abbrev. words.
- Section headings uppercase the major words and are in bold (Like This)
- Use the serial comma: one, two, and three; not one, two and three.
- Cite references, include hyperlinks.
- Keep it brief.
Distribution Channels:
For release publications, follow HACKING. For everything else, distribute to the following:
- brlcad-news@lists.sourceforge.net
- http://brlcad.org/d/node/add/story
- https://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=105292
- (optional) https://brlcad.org/wiki/
- (optional) http://www.tenlinks.com/NEWS/tl_daily/submit_news.htm
- (optional) http://upfrontezine.com
Ready for Publication
These articles are ready for publication. Release notes should be posted after tarballs, ideally the last or first week of a month. Other publications should be scheduled one or two weeks later, ideally on the second or third week of the month.
Note: if you see a comment indicating that a section is FROZEN, any changes you make in that section may go unnoticed as the article is being prepared for distribution. If you find errors in a FROZEN article, go ahead and correct the article but contact Sean (brlcad on freenode IRC) who may be able to incorporate changes during final publication.
Move from Final Review to Here When Ready
Final Editorial Review
These should be "complete" articles. The author is done. All that remains is a structure, grammar, voice, punctuation, and spelling review. Images welcome.
Kyle Bodt: Ronja
Ronja (Reasonable Optical Near Joint Access) is an innovative piece of equipment that utilizes reliable optical data links to create a current communication range of 1.4 km and a speed of 10Mbps full duplex that can be used as a general purpose wireless link for virtually any networking project. This is a very important project for Twibright Labs, a small group of computer science graduate students operating out of Charles University in Prague in the Czech Republic. The group specializes in the usage of Free Software and User Controlled Technology Development.
The primary output for the Ronja project is a design. The lab does not intend to manufacture and sell the hardware that is being designed but wants to engage in open source development of the technology. The philosophy surrounding User Controlled Technology is the ideal that the end-user is provided with unrestricted access to the intellectual property surrounding the technology, including the tools that are being used to create it. One tool playing an integral part in the development of the Ronja designs is BRL-CAD. All of the models that Twibright labs use to display the different variants of their Ronja concept were created with the help of BRL-CAD. BRL-CAD has allowed the members of Twibright labs to create instructional diagrams so that the users and builders of their open source technology will be able to have the latest information with regard to the proper construction of a Ronja unit. The interactive geometry editor and ray-tracers in BRL-CAD are an integral part in the communication of design plans for Twibright labs and enables them to connect with the users, who are the driving force behind the User Controlled Technology ideal.
Initial Drafts
These are incomplete articles being worked on. Short 250 to 500-word articles (not counting tables, images, etc) are usually perfect.
Anurag Murty: Voxelizing Geoemtry
Cristina Precup: Visualizing Directed Acyclic Graphs
Ksenija Slivko: Reducing Code
Laijiren: NURBS Tessellation: What, Why, How?
Suryajith Chillara: Benchmark Performance Database
Wu Jianbang: NURBS surface-surface intersections
Andrei Popescu: Network Performance Testing
Chris Dueck: Calculating 2D Sketch Surface Area
Cliff Yapp: NURBS Ray Tracing in BRL-CAD
Over the past year, an intense development effort by BRL-CAD's development team has successfully implemented raytracing of Non-Uniform Rational BSpline (NURBS) geometry within the BRL-CAD Computer-Aided Design (CAD) package. NURBS surfaces are very general, very complex mathematical shapes used by virtually all modern commercial CAD software packages. Because BRL-CAD did not originally support this type of geometry, commercial models could only be imported into BRL-CAD after a labor-intensive and difficult conversion process from NURBS form to triangle-base geometry (referred to in BRL-CAD as Bags-of-Triangles or BoTs). The new NURBS raytracing capability builds on work by many developers over a period of years, who in turn built on the open source library OpenNURBS. Support for this primitive type means BRL-CAD can now store and raytrace data from commercial models without requiring preliminary conversion to another type of geometry.
The last major feature needed to make import of commercial models in BRL-CAD straightforward is conversion support for ISO’s "Standard for the Exchange of Product model data" or STEP file format. STEP uses NURBS geometry in its definition, making support for NURBS geometry a necessary prelude to support for STEP import. Most commercial CAD modelers support this file format as an output option, hence STEP support in BRL-CAD would allow a direct path for moving geometric descriptions from a variety of commercial modelers to BRL-CAD. Considerable progress has already been made on STEP import support, but more work is need to bring the code and feature set to "production quality". If anyone would like to join the BRL-CAD open source development effort and has a little familiarity with C++, the step-g converter and its supporting libraries have some simple-yet-useful tasks that would be an excellent and very useful way to explore the project - join BRL-CAD's IRC channel or development email list if you are interested!
Erik Greenwald: Bolting ADRT's libtie under the hood
Initial progress on the integration of ADRT's libtie "triangle intersection engine" with LIBRT.
Idea Hopper
These are ideas for interesting or useful publications. We need someone to at least write a draft.
BRL-CAD's Evolutionary API
Talk about BRL-CAD deprecation process.
Introduction to new .deb and .rpm builds
Brief article overviewing the efforts by jordisayol for Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, and openSUSE. Included are new icons, menu items, mime type associations, and more.
2010 End Of Year Review
Article giving an overview of the past year's highlight developments with hints at what 2011 may bring. Alternatively, may be the annual statistics review if we switch from fiscal to calendar year reporting.
Erik Greenwald: ADRT/ISST Visualization
Article introducing ADRT/ISST core capability.
Bob Parker: Alpha Archer: Working Towards Next Generation MGED
Article introducing Archer's core new features that will be "coming" to MGED. Undo, interactive editing, tree view, and info panels come to mind.
Finding the Hot Spots
Article on the rt lighting model Stephen Kennedy developed that visualizes the time spent per-pixel.
Point Clouds
Article introducing the new point cloud primitive.
bn_mat_inv: singular matrix
Article on the v4 format and binary compatibility.
Model Showcase: Goliath
Article talking about the making of the Goliath model.
Model Showcase: Chumaciera
Article on Pedro Baptista's bearing model.
Model Showcase: Proyecto Catapulta
Article on a model developed by André Santos, António Almeida, and Pedro Ferreira.
Model Showcase: Union Coupling Tool
Article on a model developed by Inês de Matos under teacher Luís Ferreira. The project focuses on a tool, union coupling, based on the book, http://purl.pt/14352 , page 122 of the original book and page 128 of the file, figures 108 and 109.
Geometry Service FAQ
FAQ summarization of the GS as it pertains to the wider open source community.
BRL-CAD's 3rd Generation Build System
Article on the new CMake build system.
BRL-CAD's Open Source Vision
Article introducing the Project Priorities diagram and overall project vision.
BRL-CAD Primitives Showcase
Article summarizing all of BRL-CAD's primitives and their current status.
BRL-CAD Geometry Converter Showcase
Article summarizing all of BRL-CAD's geometry converters.
Release Schedule
Explain our release schedule and versioning system.
RTGL
Article on Nick's point-based visualization mode.
BRL-CAD Quick Reference Card
Article on a BRL-CAD QRC similar to the existing MGED QRC.
BRL-CAD Bibliography
After the .bib gets published to the website, an article announcing it and soliciting additions.
Revolve Primitive
Article on Timothy Van Ruitenbeek's work implementing 'revolve'.
Parametrics and Constraints
Article on Dawn Thomas' work to integrate parametric equation and constraint evaluation support.
Converting Implicit to Explicit: CSG to BREP NURBS
Article on the work by Cliff Yapp, Joe Doliner, and Ben Poole converting primitives with an implicit representation into an explicit NURBS representation.
Online Model Repository
Article on Elena Băutu's work developing the model repository website.
Project Statistics for 2010
Article on our current stats similar to previous years.
Next Generation BRL-CAD
Article on our super secret awesome new GUI.
