FOSDEM FreeCAD & Blender

[keithsloan52]

Was there any meetup with the Blender folks at FOSDEM?

I know there are some synergy type work, might have been GSOC with Blender.

Was wondering about somebody developing an Open Source solution for going from Mesh to Nurbs.
Would be a lead in to more cooperation between Blender and FreeCAD

In the past I came across a research paper on Blending Polyhedra with Nurbs
authors - Xuefu Wang, Jiaguang Sun, and Kaihuai Qin
https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.10 ... 68456-5_23

I think it would be best with some university (maths?) department involvement.
Is there much cooperation between the FOSS and universities?

[vocx]

Was there any meetup with the Blender folks at FOSDEM?

Ton Roosendaal, the main guy at Blender, was at FOSDEM so I'm pretty sure Yorik and the other guys talked with him, at least informally.

Was wondering about somebody developing an Open Source solution for going from Mesh to Nurbs.

I'm not sure what you mean about this, but you can export any solid to STL or OBJ and import it in Blender. This isn't difficult to do. I'm not sure what else you have in mind. FreeCAD is good at solids, if your intention is working with meshes, then FreeCAD does have some tools for it, but definitely Blender is a better option.

Is there much cooperation between the FOSS and universities?

Technical software projects very commonly start as some sort of university project; if not directly developed by a university department, very often by university graduates who continue something they created while they were students.

If you can get a university involved in helping out FreeCAD, that'd be great. We know several users use FreeCAD in research settings (FEM, CFD, dynamic bodies simulation), but so far it seems none of them have stepped up big time to contribute consistently to develop the core of the software.

[keithsloan52]

Was wondering about somebody developing an Open Source solution for going from Mesh to Nurbs.

I'm not sure what you mean about this, but you can export any solid to STL or OBJ and import it in Blender. This isn't difficult to do. I'm not sure what else you have in mind. FreeCAD is good at solids, if your intention is working with meshes, then FreeCAD does have some tools for it, but definitely Blender is a better option.

What I mean by this is that you take as input a Mesh ( STL or OBJ) and then the software converts that to Nurbs so that it can then be worked
on in applications like Rhino or FreeCAD if the nurbs workbench is up to it. i.e. it takes the tessellated surfaces and converts to nurb surfaces.
With the nurb surfaces you can develop, refine the design further. STL/OBJ are really only output formats.

Such software does exist see the paper https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.10 ... 68456-5_23 If you check out the authors
one of them is Jiaguang Sun who is a professor at tsinghua.edu.cn. I think the software is in professional software in China.
Not aware that China offers much in the FOSS arena

[keithsloan52]

If you can get a university involved in helping out FreeCAD, that'd be great. We know several users use FreeCAD in research settings (FEM, CFD, dynamic bodies simulation), but so far it seems none of them have stepped up big time to contribute consistently to develop the core of the software.

Thinking about it there are a number of FOSS software projects that have been started by Uni people, Fritzing, McCAD but these two don't seem to have worked out so well. Fritzing they were obviously hoping to make money on the electronic FAB side. It all stopped when the funding stopped and is only now being revived in true FOSS style.

There does not seem to be any developments with McCAD github repro unless they have moved it somewhere else.

Both German Uni's by the way.

[vocx]

... takes the tessellated surfaces and converts to nurb surfaces.

I think that can be done in Blender. You import STLs, and they can be converted into Nurbs surfaces within the Blender application, or maybe using some plugins.

[vocx]

...
Thinking about it there are a number of FOSS software projects that have been started by Uni people...

You mentioned FOSDEM. Some of the talks there were open source projects in the electronics design area and a FEM solver, if I recall, that were started by people during university studies.

[keithsloan52]

... takes the tessellated surfaces and converts to nurb surfaces.

I think that can be done in Blender. You import STLs, and they can be converted into Nurbs surfaces within the Blender application, or maybe using some plugins.

Looks like you are right, will have to check it out
https://blender.stackexchange.com/quest ... ve-surface

[Quaoar]

Was wondering about somebody developing an Open Source solution for going from Mesh to Nurbs.

This is the subject of my research in fact (https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... CAD_Models). There is no MVP so far though. Also, the main focus for now would be organic shapes as it is easier to automate. There are tons of papers on that subject (reverse engineering), if you want to discuss, we can move to a dedicated topic.

[bernd]

... FOSDEM. Some of the talks there were open source projects ... a FEM solver, if I recall, that were started by people during university studies.

related to FreeCAD? That would surely interests me ...

[wmayer]

... FOSDEM. Some of the talks there were open source projects ... a FEM solver, if I recall, that were started by people during university studies.

related to FreeCAD? That would surely interests me ...

https://fosdem.org/2020/schedule/event/sparselizard/