python CAD libraries?

[Jayden]

Are there any python CAD libraries that can

(1) build simple 3D primitives solids such as spheres, cylinders and so on
(2) perform bool operations on 3D solids
(3) better if it has some transformations such has scaling, sweeping, and lofting

Please recommend some good ones for me? Thanks a lot!!

[Gary Herron]

Try PythonCAD: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pythoncad/

(Google would have been faster. :-) )

Gary Herron

--
Dr. Gary Herron
Department of Computer Science
DigiPen Institute of Technology
(425) 895-4418

[Jayden]

Thank you. But this is for 2D.

[david]

Thank you. But this is for 2D.

3-d is just manipulating what's shown in x/y points(and not as easy as it sounds) .

I went with cartesian coordinate, a 360x360 canvas(with 90x90 degree view port), and a little trig for front/back/left/right/up/down, and amplitude or z distance for my first attempt, and now porting it into the Blender game engine.

I've used maya(I think that was the name), and matplotlib, but Blender.org(open source) is great for 3d rendering/game engine, etc, and has a nice python API, with great tutorials everywhere.

If you checkout my homepage in my sig, you can see a roughdraft of somethings I was working on for it.

I'd say go with an earlier version(more tuts/examples), but they put them out pretty quick, so 2.6 my be best to start with, and it uses python 3.x.



--
Best Regards,
David Hutto
CEO: http://www.hitwebdevelopment.com

[David Hutto]

Might have posted that too many times, I don't use the google groups that much.

[David Hutto]

Might have posted that too many times, I don't use the google groups that much.
>

[Alec Taylor]

Blender is definitely the most popular open-source CAD software; it
has even forked its own version of Python to make things run neatly :P

On Tue, Sep 11, 2012 at 5:33 PM, Dwight Hutto <dwight...@gmail.com> wrote:
> And just a little more for you from:
>
> http://wiki.python.org/moin/Applications#A3D_CAD.2FCAM
>
> This looked interesting:
> http://free-cad.sourceforge.net/
>>
>>
> but I have to get to a few other things, so I hope this helps.
>
>
>
> --

> Best Regards,
> David Hutto
> CEO: http://www.hitwebdevelopment.com
>
>

> --
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
>

[Marco Nawijn]

Hi Jayden,

In my opinion, the best you can get is OpenCascade (OCC) (www.opencascade.org) in combination with the python bindings (www.pythonocc.org). OCC is a hugh C++ CAD library. It not only deals with the simple geometric stuff, but it can be used to build CAD programs similar to SolidEdge or SolidWorks. It does however come with quite a steep learning curve. When using PythonOCC, the learning curve becomes a little less steep.

Also note that in my opinion, Blender cannot be considered as a CAD environment. Ofcourse it is very powerful, but I think it is more targeted towards animation and visually pleasing applications, not mechanical engineering.

Regards,

Marco

[Jayden]

Hi, Marco,

Thank you so much! This is what I exactly want. But I am a little concerned about its steep learning curve. Is it really hard to learn pythonOCC? Averagely, how long does it take to begin to program some practical code? Do you have any good advice for me to learn it? I deeply appreciate your kind help!!

Best regards,

Jayden

[Ramchandra Apte]

You could use Blender. It has support for Python 3 (I don't know whether it has support for Python 2)

[ammon.h...@gmail.com]

I know this is an old post, but I wanted to recommend another Python CAD library
called Pascale: https://aerion-tech.com/pascale

It creates commercial grade CAD geometry through an intuitive Python API. Although it is a paid software, but there is a free version available to use on the Cloud.