3D Modeling
From CandyFabWiki
The CandyFab is designed to fabricate 3D models, so it is reasonable to discuss how those models are created. As a machine, CandyFab does not really care whether the object that it is fabricating started out as a 3D mathematical model, a CAD drawing, or as a regular object captured by a 3D scanner. All of these methods can produce 3D file output that can be interpreted by the CandyFab and its associated software.
Early 3D modeling for the CandyFab project has been done in POV-Ray, the Persistence of Vision Raytracer, free tool for making high-quality 3D graphics. POV-Ray is available in official versions for Windows, Mac OS/Mac OS X and i86 Linux. While it is not officially an open-source project, the source code is available for those wanting to do their own ports.
Technical Requirements
While the CandyFab software ultimately expects a set of 2D sliced image files, we have slicing utilities that can convert (presently) from STL and/or POV-Ray file formats into a set of sliced images. As we add additional conversion utilities to our list of known tools, these requirements are expected to relax. Software chosen to work with the CandyFab project should (at a minimum) work well under the Mac, Windows, and Linux operating systems.
Licensing and Platform issues
The CandyFab project intends to support free and open source software preferentially to commercial and proprietary software. Historically, open-source efforts have done a better job of producing true cross-platform software than their commercial counterparts.
List of 3D packages known to generate STL and/or POV-Ray output
Several 3D packages are known meet our technical and license requirements and can generate output suitable for use with CandyFab.
- POV-Ray Web site WP.
- Early software of choice for the CandyFab project.
- Free software with source code available
- Cross-platform binaries available
- STL import through scripts
- Interface is text based. Precise and powerful, but can be challenging for newcomers.
