Caligari trueSpace was a fairly popular 3D modeling, rendering and animation program. Then Microsoft bought Caligari, intending it to be their answer to Google's Sketchup, for people to use to populate Microsoft's competitor to Google Earth with 3D models.
Microsoft made trueSpace 7.6 freeware, then after about a year shot the whole thing down. Various versions of trueSpace can still be downloaded for free. It's still a nice program, especially the versions (IIRC starting with 6.5) with the Lightworks render engine. The price of trueSpace with Lightworks built in was *less* than the cost of Lightworks as an addon to Lightwave.
trueSpace can save to COB format 4.3, 5.x and 6.0. Dunno what's different but I can provide as many examples as needed to use for adding the format to FreeCAD. Need various primitive shapes with specific dimensions and numbers of edges, vertexes etc? Happy to oblige! I also have a collection of objects I've made over several years using various versions of trueSpace.
Why have COB import in FreeCAD when trueSpace can export to several common CAD and 3D formats (with Conversions Pack 2.1)? Because trueSpace's non-native format support is <censored>. It screws up dimensions, moves axes, forcibly triangulates DXF and some other formats that don't absolutely *have* to be triangulated, and other odd and annoying things.
With its native COB format it's just fine.
Feature request: Import Caligari OBject (COB) files.
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Re: Feature request: Import Caligari OBject (COB) files.
Is the .COB file format open? Is there a detailed specifications document available somewhere? If not, there is not a good chance of integrating this format in FreeCAD.
In any case, you are the first to make this request, as things stand one of the devs would have a need for it to work on adding this feature.
In any case, you are the first to make this request, as things stand one of the devs would have a need for it to work on adding this feature.
Re: Feature request: Import Caligari OBject (COB) files.
Some info
http://www.wotsit.org/list.asp?search=C ... &button=GO!
http://nehe.gamedev.net/article/reading ... ile/27001/
Circa 2005, Blender could read binary but not ASCII COB files. Open source, use Blender's COB code as a base for importing to FreeCAD?
At least read the shape data and preserve axes location and orientation, even when the object position has not been "normalized" to shift the axes to the origin. The fancy shaders and materials properties could be ignored. Then there's NURBS and other advanced geometry features in later versions of COB.
If all a COB import for FreeCAD could handle is solid meshes with no subobjects, no NURBs etc, I'd find it plenty useful.
http://www.wotsit.org/list.asp?search=C ... &button=GO!
http://nehe.gamedev.net/article/reading ... ile/27001/
Circa 2005, Blender could read binary but not ASCII COB files. Open source, use Blender's COB code as a base for importing to FreeCAD?
At least read the shape data and preserve axes location and orientation, even when the object position has not been "normalized" to shift the axes to the origin. The fancy shaders and materials properties could be ignored. Then there's NURBS and other advanced geometry features in later versions of COB.
If all a COB import for FreeCAD could handle is solid meshes with no subobjects, no NURBs etc, I'd find it plenty useful.