Saturday, May 14, 2005
First Physical Output From AoI
We've had a bit of a milestone in that Adrian has used the ArtOfIllusion package to output a solid object on the StrataSys FDM machine for the first time. This proves that we can now generate the STL using an Open Source toolchain. Picture is here.
I've been using stlview to examine STL output as a quick sanity check here in NZ. This viewer is cross-platform and GPL'd.
Additionally, the AoI team may be able to develop a way of creating output from their renderer in 'slices'. One neat feature of AoI is its ability to output rendering as a vector as well as a bitmap. A 'slice' of the model could be output in SVG, for example. This allows the definition of such tricky things as wall thickness and filling with crosshatch.
Some parts are being designed with 4mm holes on a 12.7mm (1/2 inch) pitch, so that they will interface easily with Meccano testbeds.
I've been using stlview to examine STL output as a quick sanity check here in NZ. This viewer is cross-platform and GPL'd.
Additionally, the AoI team may be able to develop a way of creating output from their renderer in 'slices'. One neat feature of AoI is its ability to output rendering as a vector as well as a bitmap. A 'slice' of the model could be output in SVG, for example. This allows the definition of such tricky things as wall thickness and filling with crosshatch.
Some parts are being designed with 4mm holes on a 12.7mm (1/2 inch) pitch, so that they will interface easily with Meccano testbeds.
