CAD GUI Framework

qtoptus · 29th September 2010, 20:29

Sorry for the long delay. The project is still a work in progress, and undergoing a massive design. Unfortunately there's currently no dedicated website or a demo you can experiment with. As soon as I finish the basic functionality, then I will provide a link to a host site for the project where you can check out the progress of the work.

Currently the basic components and functionality I have in mind are the following:

(1) Embeddable Rendering Control which serves as a canvas for 2D and 3D drawings. The control provides streamlined drawing capabilities which are abstracted on top of graphics driver. the implementation of the control can be specified at run-time to either OpenGL or Direct3D. This control is accessible from the Designer as a normal GUI component which can be positioned and re-sized.

(2) Viewports which represent the core functionality of the rendering view, which can be a 2D graphics editor or a 3D scene rendering view. Viewport objects can be mapped to different rendering canvases and share the same context when required. Basic viewport types are to be supported including a 2D editor which provides a rendering, selection, and entity manipulation mechanisms.

(3) GUI-View-Model Communication Layer. It represents the communication layer between the model and the views. The interaction of user with viewports and various GUI panels and the model is made transparent and decoupled.

Your feedback and suggestions are very important. I would appreciate what I call "concept code" that shows what and how you expect to use such an API.

Thanks.

**john_god** · 29th September 2010, 22:42

Has a Cad user, I have some sugestions. Viewport seems to be very popular, but I dont use it anymore, changing between them is slow. Interactive graphic comands IMHO should be like autocad clone. Every decent cad user should be familiar with autocad, and has a user I dont want loose time learning yet anothet cad. Please make a software that's really fast, I usually work with short deadlines, and sometimes late at night when I am so very tired, and I get very frustated if I have to wait 2 or 3 second for a zoom to end. Some extra functionalities like Coreldraw move and copy command would be great. what the hell are the autocad developers thinking ? This corel commands I mentioned are so much easier, faster and efficient to draw. Good luck with your work. Oh and has a cad user I really dont care if its OpenGl or Direct3D, I want it to be FAAAAST (corel zoom, panning and moving suck by the way)

**Jeff100** · 30th September 2010, 04:31

I would like to have import function for the first release, either IGES or DXF is fine. Also who are the Framework's users? Qt developers or CAD end user? If it is targeted for developers, what kind of license is planned? Qt developer like license?

Thanks for your effort, and looking forward to the first beta release.

qtoptus · 1st October 2010, 22:16

Well I think I was unclear. The framework is actually an SDK targeting developers of CAD applications.

Licensing is now too early to decide on. At this stage I expect feedback from developers of CAD programs who can suggest features and functionality.

Thanks.