Fornjot Blog

The great thing about OpenSCAD is that it makes it easy to programmatically model objects using cubes, cylinders, cones, and spheres by placing, stretching, and rotating them. The awful thing about OpenSCAD is that one's ability to model in it is strongly bounded by one's fluency with mathematics and ability to use math to programmatically model objects using cubes, cylinders, cones, and spheres by placing, stretching, and rotating them. The one tool I'm aware of which is looking at a new geometry kernel which I can recall is: https://fornjot.app/

Note that there's an existing CAD-in-Rust project, Fornjot, which has been quietly developing since 2020: https://www.fornjot.app/

> Same, but I don't think it's possible without a large and sustained investment into a free geometric modelling kernel, which can probably be only done by a government. Fornjot has been attempting this: https://www.fornjot.app It's going to be years or decades before it's competitive though. Also, it looks like they switched to keeping progress updates private except to sponsors, which means I don't actually have any easily-accessible information about it anymore which is sad.

Fornjot[0][1] is also really impressive as a CAD kernel. It is written in Rust, and is still a WIP, but I think is turning out nicely. [0]https://www.fornjot.app/ [1]https://github.com/hannobraun/fornjot

https://www.fornjot.app/ is an attempt, and also good at showing what a large undertaking such a goal is

There is so much wrong with this article. Throw a little bit of ML pixie dust on everything for more hype? Check. Compare wildly different things as if they were the same? Double check. digdugdirk has the right idea, and AFAIR, there is some work on that front (https://www.fornjot.app/). Also the Fiat 500 goes 100km on about 4l of gas, while the Ford F150 uses 7l. No clue where the author gets the idea that the Fiat would get worse mileage, perhaps he's dividing by weight? The rest, I don't even.

They have to start with what's the easiest to implement, and if their kernel is in Rust, then the easiest frontend is in Rust. From their FAQ [1]: > Fornjot is architected to be language-agnostic, and adding support for other languages should be relatively straight-forward, actually. Hopefully one day, there will be a selection of interoperable Fornjot frontends, so you can choose the best language for your model. [1] https://www.fornjot.app/faq/

I saw a programatic Web cad tool before, took a moment to find it (and along the way I found a few others). Caveat: of these I have only used Onshape, and I tend to use it via the graphical interface. - First up Onshape is web based, but is actually programmable behind the scenes (and all documents are scripts under the hood). This is used to let you write plugins it for it. - The one I was thinking of used to be called KittyCAD but has since been renamed: https://zoo.dev/ (looked at it briefly but it was in very early stages then). - https://www.fornjot.app/ is a work in progress CAD engine that can compile to WASM. Written in Rust (so big plus for me there, I have switched from C++ to Rust for most things). There are a few python cad things already as well: SolidPython, PythonSCAD and CadQuery. FreeCAD is also scriptable in python. Due to the large size, python really isn't suitable for embedding in wasm though.

From its "Advantages of Code-CAD" page:[0] > There are other disadvantages to Code-CAD, of course. Making a sketch and applying some constraints can be very easy with a nice GUI, while having to type it all out would be very tedious. > For that reason, I think the ideal CAD program would use a hybrid approach: Being code-first for all the reasons presented above, but letting you edit that code through graphical tools, where it makes sense. I'm not aware of any system that works like that, at least to the extent that is possible in principle. I believe that creating such a system would be a worthwhile effort. As for 2D CAD apps, such feature already exists since 1980s when AutoLISP created for AutoCAD (opensource apps with similar scripting: QCAD, LibreCAD). As for 3D CAD apps, and especially opensource, FreeCAD has ability to generate shapes or sketches with script and it would be possible to edit resulted geometry manually with GUI tools. [0] https://www.fornjot.app/blog/code-cad-advantages/

I was extremely excited about Fornjot for both personal and professional reasons, but the author has shared important updates that would deter me from using it outside of hobbyist contexts: May 2023 https://www.fornjot.app/blog/a-new-direction/ I don't know how things will shake out long-term, but for now, I'm going to reduce my effort to one day per week... As of now, the goal of Fornjot is no longer to build a CAD application. From now on, Fornjot is a CAD kernel... Last week: https://www.fornjot.app/blog/changes-to-the-development-process/ There will be no more releases for the time being. I will no longer submit pull requests for my own work.

Hey, creator of Fornjot here. I had experimented with f-rep for years before switching to b-rep for the current iteration of Fornjot. I came to the conclusion that f-rep, while neat, is too limited for what I intend to do. I came to a similar conclusion regarding the mesh-based approach of CGAL. I've written more about that here: https://www.fornjot.app/blog/why-fornjot-is-using-boundary-representat…

It is mentioned on author's website though. https://www.fornjot.app/blog/the-world-needs-another-cad-program/ >There is lots of interesting space between "hobbyist" and "can justify to spend loads of money", and I tend to find myself right in the middle of that. Feels like an indie cad era is upon us. Plasticity, mart3d, antimony .. >A CAD application, especially one with a custom CAD kernel, is a huge project. What I've always found amusing is that there are actually quite a few geometric modeling kernels and every one of them costs a ton. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geometric_modeling_kernel

OpenSCAD is mentioned in the first article in the website, “The world needs another CAD program” [1]: > The most popular Code-CAD application, as far as I can tell, is OpenSCAD. While programming your CAD models, like you would program software, provides a lot of flexibility, the feature set of OpenSCAD is otherwise very limited. This makes many CAD modeling tasks tedious. > I want to use something more powerful, and that rules out OpenSCAD and a whole bunch of other less-known alternatives. [1]: https://www.fornjot.app/blog/the-world-needs-another-cad-program/