Mac / Perl / 3D

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Peter N Lewis - 26 Jul 2006 02:59 GMT

I'm interested in producing some drawings/diagrams/pictures based on
3D data/objects generated from Perl. Something that would allow me
to write code that generates boxes, cylinders, spheres, etc with
various colours and material styles and generate an image (or
potentially an animation).

Any suggestions? The best bet seems to be to use SDL_Perl, although
a brief look seems to indicate I'll be installing packages for the
next month.

Thanks for any hints or warnings,
Peter.

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Doug McNutt - 26 Jul 2006 03:52 GMT

>I'm interested in producing some drawings/diagrams/pictures based on 3D data/objects generated from Perl. Something that would allow me to write code that generates boxes, cylinders, spheres, etc with various colours and material styles and generate an image (or potentially an animation).

I have used perl on a Mac, starting with MacPerl, to generate Autodesk DXF formatted stuff. Not much in 3D but a couple of specialized projects that 2D folks were happy with.

If you start with an exported DXF file from the version of AutoCAD that's being used you can copy the boilerplate from front and back. I usually use Vectorworks to view my own work and it doesn't care much about the boilerplate. There is other software that reads and displays the format. The current specification for DXF is freely available at the AutoCAD web site in html format.

Ask if you'd like some samples.

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John Delacour - 26 Jul 2006 08:33 GMT

>I'm interested in producing some drawings/diagrams/pictures based on
>3D data/objects generated from Perl. Something that would allow me
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
>a brief look seems to indicate I'll be installing packages for the
>next month.

After several attempts over the past 2 years to install all that's
necessary to do this sort of thing with PerlDL (I can't remember if I
looked at SDL_Perl) I ended up doing these things with Smile/SmileLab
<http://www.satimage.fr/software/en/presentation.html>, some of the
data being generated with Perl. Smile creates vector PDF files and
these can be converted to DXF using a programme called Cenon
<http://www.cenon.info/frame_gb.html> for import to other programmes
or for numerically controlled machinery. Ghostscript and hpijs
<http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/hpijs/>, both simply installed,
are all that is needed besides. Smile can also create movies from
the drawings. I have not done any 3D work but a licence for Smile
allows this also.

Write me off-list if you'd like some examples.

JD

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Sherm Pendley - 26 Jul 2006 14:50 GMT

> I'm interested in producing some drawings/diagrams/pictures based
> on 3D data/objects generated from Perl. Something that would allow
[quoted text clipped - 7 lines]
>
> Thanks for any hints or warnings,

POV-Ray uses text-based source files that are fairly easy to create
with Perl:

<http://povray.org>

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Peter N Lewis - 29 Jul 2006 07:53 GMT

Thanks for the various answers.

I have done the Perl -> POV-RAY source before, as well as Perl ->
3DML text format before.

I guess I could also use any scriptable drawing package (see
<http://www.peter.com.au/programming/scripted-drawing.html> ;-) and
do my own 3D conversion as necessary.

None of this seems entirely satisfactory though...

Thanks for the ideas.
Peter.

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Mac Forum / Programming / Perl / July 2006

Mac / Perl / 3D