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by CountVonGuetzli 74 days ago
I didn't know OnShape had such a feature. Will check it out!

What you describe is one of the main reasons why I use Rhino3D. It can be scripted via the Grasshopper plugin, which integrates really nicely with Rhino and its primitives. Sadly, Rhino isn't open source and is quite pricy

- https://www.rhino3d.com/ - https://www.grasshopper3d.com/
1 comments
injidup 74 days ago
The fun thing is that onshape itself has a very thin kernel. Most of what you see as built in features are actually featurescript based. Onshape provides the source code for their built in feature set as a reference. https://cad.onshape.com/documents/12312312345abcabcabcdeff/w... You do need an account login ( free ) to view it.
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aaronblohowiak 74 days ago
Kernel here is ambiguous.. I get what you mean, but parasolid is usually the thing described as the cad kernel.
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injidup 74 days ago
You are right but I also kind of did mean it that way. I believe that Parasolid is at heart of Onshape, the true kernel. Then on top of that is a compatibility layer describing the set of low level operations available to featurescript. I'm sure that not everything in Parasolid is available to featurescript and perhaps there are some things added that are not in Parasolid. Featurescript also contains the selector/query logic for programatically picking geometry. Whether that comes from Parasolid I am not sure. I haven't worked with featurescript for a number of years now but when I did I was amazed. I managed to make an operation for taking any solid from the UI and generating customized interlocking ribbing. The idea was hollow surfboard design. It worked and I left it at that. Never built the surfboard!

However the downside with featurescript and I think a big mistake on their part was to use a custom language rather than python or javascript. Featurescript is almost javascript but with some syntax changes and magic DSL's. You are also forced to use the inbuilt editor which is horrible and if you have burned VIM keybinding into your nerve endings, going back to non modal editing is horrible.

Also the discovery of featurescript modules in the community has terrible UX. It's super weird that they have such a great system but finding useful extensions is horrible.

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