[Arm-netbook] eoma and qimod

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 3:32 PM, joem <joem at martindale-electric.co.uk> wrote:
> On Tue, 2014-06-24 at 14:56 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 24, 2014 at 2:06 PM, joem <joem at martindale-electric.co.uk> wrote:
>> > On Tue, 2014-06-24 at 12:20 +0100, Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton wrote:
>> >> On Mon, Jun 23, 2014 at 10:12 PM, joem <joem at martindale-electric.co.uk> wrote:
>> >> >
>> >> >> >  The final jigsaw is a fully GPL'd openscad based case designs for
>> >> >> >  tablet, netbooks, panel computer, and match box sized gadget.
>> >> >> >  Got me four 3D printers to address that soon enough.
>> >> >>
>> >> >>  oo.  i have a partially-completed layout for a tablet in blender, all
>> >> >> the components have "parts"representing them - touchscreen etc - it
>> >> >> needs the "outside" making.  any takers?
>> >> >
>> >> > I got 4 printers - one of them formlabs.
>> >> > I'm very proficient at openscad parametric design now as well.
>> >> > If you are open sourcing it, drop the files somewhere and I
>> >> > get it printed.
>> >>
>> >>  it needs completing.  there's no actual case, just the parts that go
>> >> *in* the case (including touchscreen) so that the case can be made
>> >> around them properly without screwing up.
>> >
>> >
>> > ? I'm not sure what that means.
>>
>>  there are parts inside.  it is very easy to make a case where the
>> parts don't bloody well fit.
>>
>>  for example the battery compartment is the wrong size. the hole for
>> the camera is in the wrong place.  the connector for the touchscreen
>> can't fit because there's bloody well bits of plastic in the way.
>>
>>  is that clear now?
>
> Nope. Verbosity makes things unclear.
>
> If things don't fit, I change parameter and print again.
> Its parametric. Two three iterations, and job is done!

 yes... but you have access to a 3D printer on a fast cycle.  the
internal 3D layout of all components *had* to be done as CAD/CAM
because we did *not* have access to a 3D printer on a low-cost fast
iterative cycle.

>
>> > The easiest option for me then is to take one of a numerous
>> > number of tablets I got, strip it down and do an openscad parametric
>> > design and release it fully GPL'd after making sure it can be 3D
>> > printed.
>>
>>  great idea.  can you use pyopenscad rather than direct openscad?
>
> Probably.

 it's pretty obvious, object-orientated and if you can handle openscad
directly i think you can handle pyopenscad.  it actually outputs
openscad files so that way you can see what is going on iteratively.

>> end result is that you can do very sparse spec'ing of a complex 3D
>> shape and it will generate a smooth 3D sheet that fits exactly through
>> those points.
>
>
> Snap! Funny thing I needed exactly something like that for various
> projects.

  the only (current) limitation is that the "offset" for creating the
3D shape is a *fixed* vector.  by that i mean that rather than specify
the "thickness"and do some normalised vector calculations at every
single damn point created, what i did was *copy* the surface that was
created, shift every single point by the fixed vector then create
edges around the sides to join the two surfaces up.

 the down-side of that approach is that if there is extreme curvature
in the surface being created the thickness will end up varying or
possibly even be zero (or overlap) creating an invalid shape.

 at some point i will revisit the code and work out how to create the
best "rangle" between each of the 3 to 4 vectors coming in to a single
point.  it's harder than it sounds because sometimes they could
overlap.

l.