Writing spline-based POV-Ray shapes with many points can be tedious work, so I
wanted to make this possible by clicking in a grid on screen and having the
points translated automatically into POV-Ray scene language.

Apps for this do exist, but I wanted a simpler, portable one with certain extra
features, so I wrote one in JustBasic. It runs fine on all Windows versions I
have tried (98/ME/XP/Vista/7/8), and I thought others might find it useful.

Basically, it gives you a 17 by 12 unit grid on screen, much like graph paper.
Every time you click in the grid, a red dot marks the spot, and a red line
connects it to the previous. When you are satisfied with your shape (undo is
possible), a single click writes the points to the clipboard memory and to a
text file in the appropriate POV-Ray language for either a prism, cubic prism,
lathe, cubic lathe, polygon or basic spline. The generated code is ready for
render - just copy it into your POV-Ray scene with a Ctrl+V.

You can trace the contours of a reference bitmap image by importing it as
background for the grid. You can also import saved work as background for new
work.

.....well, a picture says more than a thousand words, so I made some screenshots
for demonstration and posted them in the 'tutorial' section.

The app requires an .exe, a .tkn, 5 .dll and 3 .sll files to run, placed in the
same folder. It is a standalone Windows app and doesn't use your registry. You
can even run it from a USB stick.

You'll find the zipped folder in povray.binaries.utilities.

The files "READ_ME.txt" and "PointWriterHelp.txt" should answer any and all
questions about use of the program. I also enclose the original JustBasic file
in case you want to tinker with the program yourself.

Feedback will be appreciated.

Nevado

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