"KEBman" <nomail@nomail> wrote:
> How would you go about designing a involute gear tooth? Is it possible using
> CSG? Or perhaps is it better to use SOR or even lathe? I'm not convinced a
> Superquadric Ellipsoid would be good, as I'm concerned that it won't be
> accurate. However I'm intrigued by the isosurface, given that I could somehow
> feed it the function for an involute surface, say an extrusion of a 2D line
> based on the base circle diametre.
>
> Hoping for some constructive feedback. :)

I've "drawn" involute gears with POV-Ray using the ole' sphere-and-cylinder
sweep method.  I suppose if you made an array of points for the gear, you could
do a prism object, or just use what I already have with upright cylinders
instead of spheres and boxes instead of cylinders...

My SDL also writes out an SVG file, so you have that too.
(not sure if that part works correctly...)

I'll post my code over in the scene-files section.

Depending upon time & energy, I'm sure I could puzzle out a much more efficient
way of doing it - so be advised that the code isn't efficient or pretty.

Having a robust involute gear macro would be a delightful thing, and it's
definitely on my to-do list.

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