arrow3D - Slashdot User

Comment Re:WTF, this was already invented (Score 1) 36

by arrow3D on Wednesday November 14, 2012 @07:10AM (#41978739) Attached to: Fabricating Nature and a Physical Turing Test

Hmm, their stuff doesn't look like CSG to me - look at the blends and morphs for example, those are certainly not CSG operations.

Also, don't trust wikipedia. CSG means something very specific and is not just an interface that lets you do Boolean operations. See explanations from some of the guys who came up with the stuff: Requicha (pdf) and John Woodwark's website

Only a system which has a CSG tree as an internal representation and point membership evaluation can be called a real CSG system. As soon as it stores surfaces, it's just back to being a plain old BRep system.

The packages you mention don't actually use CSG, whatever they may call their operations. Ones that do are: iCAD (from japan), BRL-CAD (US-Army, now open source) and the old AutoSolids add-on for AutoCAD (which is dead now).

If you're interested in reading up some more, a good starting point might be the original reports

I can help if you have further questions :)

Submission + - Fabricating Nature and a Physical Turing Test

Submitted by arrow3D on Tuesday November 13, 2012 @01:59PM

arrow3D writes: A new startup in Norway is focused on design and fabrication at the level and quality of nature. Using pure mathematical volumes, rather than surfaces or voxels, they are developing a new generation of 3D modelling tools specifically aimed at high resolution 3D printing, to "support the future of design and manufacturing". Their software was recently used to create the multi-material Minotaur Helmet by Neri Oxman from MIT, as featured in Wired UK last month. An interesting thought (as recently illustrated in Dilbert) is the idea of a Physical Turing Test for synthetic objects and that both Turing Tests may require each other — i.e. only by designing and building at the resolution of nature can we achieve the intelligence of natural objects. Their software platform is still very much under development but they've started trying to "save the world from polygons" with a KickStarter campaign that's live now.

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