Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

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curt
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Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by curt »

I keep expecting to see this project somewhere, at least being worked on, but have not been able to find one.

I want to design [simple] things in VR with the trappings of CAD, not "sculpt" amorphous/useless blobs, or "draw" splashes of color, I need a tool not a toy, and all I've seen so far are toys.

I want to be able to lay out my next case mod with exact measurements and see how it's going to look, cubes/pipes/cylinders, people simple stuff.

So since no one seems to be making a simple CAD program I can use with my Oculus touch, I guess I'll have to make one. I have a prototype running in Unity and it sucks, any chance FreeCAD is the right solution to use as a back/middle end for my purposes? I see I can drive it with Python I can make that happen with some low-level interface coding if I need to.

Don't want to get too detailed before I find out if this is a non-starter, but essentially I want to feed UI events into FreeCAD and get a mesh I can render to the headset.

This already been tried? Working? Is there a product already that does this I managed to miss?

Thanks for any info :)

-Curt
triplus
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Re: Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by triplus »

curt
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Re: Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by curt »

Yes I read that, its actually what led me to this project in the first place, but seems like a dead effort and uses some proprietary standalone versions of the Oculus API.

If it is touch enabled and actively developed then great! problem solved!
triplus
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Re: Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by triplus »

Well you didn't mention in the first thread you already read that forum thread. But you did mention nobody else offers anything alike and that you do know how to code. Therefore this is likely still the best offer you will get. ;)

P.S. As for things like proprietary and only Windows API limitations. I haven't checked that lately myself if anything changed. But if it didn't you will likely need to contact them and ask if they can do a better job in the future.
curt
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Re: Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by curt »

and I think you for your prompt, helpful response.

It's looking more and more like I am going to have roll my own substantial parts of this. the UI is just too tightly integrated. I think the secret is going to be not biting off more than I can chew. I'll start with a cube.. maybe move on to spheres later :)

Actually I can get 90% to where I want to be for myself with binary operations, which are of course extremely non-trivial. In an ideal world I guess I could plug in two meshes to some kind of CAD engine and then a new mesh would pop out the other side. There are about 15 corner-cases I can think of off the top of my head that make that difficult, even if I had exactly what I needed.

Research continues!
cox
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Re: Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by cox »

This looks interensting, could become the opensource way to go. http://hackaday.com/2016/12/12/cnlohr-r ... lay-along/
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triplus
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Re: Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by triplus »

curt wrote:and I think you for your prompt, helpful response.
You're welcome.
In an ideal world I guess I could plug in two meshes to some kind of CAD engine and then a new mesh would pop out the other side.
Well in the future Oculus could make it easier for projects like FreeCAD to provide better cross-platform and integrated support. ATM it doesn’t look like they care about that all that much. Therefore lately i have read some news on how SteamVR + Vulkan and some AMD related news could be a viable options in the future. But that again is the future.

Therefore if you want something now FreeCAD has WebGL exporter and WebVR should be available in two mayor browsers. You could first test this samples:

https://webvr.info/samples/

And see if they offer what you desire and if you can build on that!
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kwahoo
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Re: Using FreeCAD as a back end for VR design app

Post by kwahoo »

cox wrote:This looks interensting, could become the opensource way to go. http://hackaday.com/2016/12/12/cnlohr-r ... lay-along/
This shouldn't be necessary in the near future, sice Valve, Oculus and others are working on an open VR API https://www.khronos.org/vr/
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