On 11/23/2012 12:17 AM, scott wrote:
>>> A quick Google reveals that OpenCascade is a free core that does that,
>>> the only real task would be writing a converter from POV's primitives
>>> and CSG commands into a format that OpenCascade would understand. It
>>> would probably easiest be written as a patch to the POV binary that
>>> could then make use POV's internal data structures after the scene has
>>> been parsed.
>>>
>> Well, apparently, at least some bugs in CarveCSG have been corrected. I
>> hadn't looked for an update for a while. Also.. in the case of the
>> program I used it in, its not "imbedded", but actually drops the mesh
>> out to a command line, then imports the result of the merge/cuts/etc.
>> Which means, basically, that there may be things it can do, and tricks
>> that are just not possible via the method being used to access it.
>
> It depends how sophisticated it is. I'm biased as I've only ever used
> commercial CAD packages, the free ones may not be as reliable or
> feature-rich, I haven't checked. But the packages I have used allow for
> all geometry POV has apart from isosurface-type things. If such a system
> was developed then a side-effect (or the main effect) would be a
> geometry preview possible on the graphics card :-)
>
Well.. As someone that can't afford the "commercial" ones, all I know 
about them is that they sometimes store things in ways that do not 
convert, and every damn one of them seems to have some proprietary 
format, making it impossible to import.

Damn 3D apps are like that too. There is this site, its all engineer 
types, and the objects are free, though there may be restrictions on 
some usage:

http://grabcad.com

but.. every damn one of this is, almost in all cases, is some format 
that **doesn't** have a translator, other than the very expensive 
program that made them (and, its not like you can keep downloading, and 
installing, demos, like you could in the old days, and get another 30 
days to work with).

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