Subject:
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Re: On the difficulty of making building instructions
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad
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Date:
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Wed, 7 Feb 2001 18:53:01 GMT
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Viewed:
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663 times
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In lugnet.cad, Jacob Sparre Andersen writes:
> On the difficulty of making building instructions:
>
> Last sunday I spent most of the day (except for a few hours out
> in the snow) showing my cousins how to make - or should I say
> _draw_ - building instructions on a computer.
>
> Personally I use vi+ldglite for this (yes, I know I should swap
> vi for Emacs), but that is not really an option for kids who
> haven't learned to do three dimensional geometry, matrices,
> vectors and all that.
>
> We - or rather they - also tried with MLCAD, and even though
> they practically could compete with me in speed, the quality
> (mostly lack of alignment) gave them some problems.
>
> This lead me to lie sleepless most of the night trying to
> figure out how to solve this problem. So far I have come to the
> conclusion that our problem is that we attempt to _draw_
> instead of _build_ - we move the parts around until the drawing
> looks right, whereas we with the real thing have the benefit of
> connecting the parts to each other.
>
>
> I will see if I can get any further with this, when I have a
> bit more time (read: when I have handed in my PhD thesis).
BlockCad (and perhaps other programs) does some collision detection
when moving the bricks to assist in the placement. You could enhance
this by inventing a mouse that provides some tactile feedback (ala
playstation controllers) when the bricks bump into each other.
Audible feedback may work just as well. A small click for a bump in
one direction, louder for two directions. Stereo effects?
Back when I worked in a certain 2D CAD industry we used a simple
mechanism that allowed the user to propel an object along a 2D vector
until it hit another object. At that point it would either stop or
continue moving along a different vector as long as the dot product of
the new and original vectors was positive. Various options could be
applied to this motion such as stopping at the first point of contact,
wiggling a bit for a better fit, or snapping to a grid (think stud
spacing). Unfortunately I have no idea as yet how to easily generate
a 3D vector (rather than a 2D vector) to propel a brick along.
Perhaps with a spaceball instead of a mouse?
Once upon a time I daydreamed about trying out some of this stuff with
the leocad source, but I also have a problem with available free time.
Have fun,
Don
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Message has 3 Replies:
 | | Re: On the difficulty of making building instructions
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| (...) Your Phd thesis is not about 3D CAD interfaces then I take it? (Which incidentally is an area of Computing Research if you know WHERE to look and ask..) (...) This sounds like a good technique... Audible feedback.. However my qyery is how easy (...) (24 years ago, 7-Feb-01, to lugnet.cad)
| | | Re: On the difficulty of making building instructions
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| I think I have a nice solution to the 3-dimensional movement. Depending on what side of the brick you mouse on, its movement is constrained. Style 1: you mouse on a brick's side, it's like you can only push or pull it in a straight line. Click on (...) (24 years ago, 8-Feb-01, to lugnet.cad)
| | | Re: On the difficulty of making building instructions
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| (...) I think you've got it just right with this, Jacob. (...) One problem with LEGO is that people want to build by "clicking" pieces into place. Putting two bricks side by side doesn't count as building a model. So collision detection is just a (...) (24 years ago, 9-Feb-01, to lugnet.cad)
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Message is in Reply To:
| | On the difficulty of making building instructions
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| On the difficulty of making building instructions: Last sunday I spent most of the day (except for a few hours out in the snow) showing my cousins how to make - or should I say _draw_ - building instructions on a computer. Personally I use (...) (24 years ago, 7-Feb-01, to lugnet.cad)
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