Consider Supporting Related CodeCAD Projects (build123d and CadQuery)

[jdegenstein]

Hello, I am involved with two open source projects that are also based on OCCT; build123d and CadQuery. These are both python-based "CodeCAD" projects for designing objects in code.

Documentation for build123d:
https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Documentation for CadQuery
https://cadquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

Would you consider supporting these two projects in JupyterCAD? We have put a lot of effort into designing good user interfaces for CodeCAD, and we noticed that your project may benefit from supporting these two projects.

[martinRenou]

Thank you for opening an issue :)

Would you consider supporting these two projects in JupyterCAD?

Definitely! We should come up with example Notebooks that does it, and change the JupyterCAD Python API to ease this support if that's needed.

[SylvainCorlay]

Quoting an email from @bernhard-42 (with his approval), who is the main author of jupyter-cadquery, one area in which the Python API of jupyer-cadquery is interesting is the enabling of algebraic expressions to operate on shapes.

[algebra mode], a simple abstraction on top of open cascade (in fact on top of build123d’s direct API which simplifies open cascade) to code objects in an algebraic way:
(location1 * obj1 + location2 * obj2) - location3 * obj3),
which means fuse obj1 at location1 with object2 at location2 and then cut obj3 at location3 from the result, see https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introductory_examples.html and https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/algebra_definition.html.

[Jojain]

Quoting an email from @bernhard-42 (with his approval), who is the main author of jupyter-cadquery, one area in which the Python API of jupyer-cadquery is interesting is the enabling of algebraic expressions to operate on shapes.

[algebra mode], a simple abstraction on top of open cascade (in fact on top of build123d’s direct API which simplifies open cascade) to code objects in an algebraic way:
(location1 * obj1 + location2 * obj2) - location3 * obj3),
which means fuse obj1 at location1 with object2 at location2 and then cut obj3 at location3 from the result, see https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introductory_examples.html and https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/algebra_definition.html.

The original work from @bernhard-42 has been merged and improved, directly in build123d so supporting it means supporting the algebra API (as well as the Builder API) !

[bernhard-42]

For context, adding the full statement that I sent to @SylvainCorlay

I looked at the current API and at a first glance it looks like a fluent API (similar to CadQuery). Build123d https://github.com/gumyr/build123d was started to get rid of the fluent API, since many users (especially non Python makers) struggled with it.

I contributed the algebra mode to it, a simple abstraction on top of open cascade (in fact on top of build123d’s direct API which simplifies open cascade) to code objects in an algebraic way:
(location1 * obj1 + location2 * obj2) - location3 * obj3)”,
which means fuse obj1 at location1 with object2 at location2 and then cut obj3 at location3 from the result, see https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introductory_examples.html and https://build123d.readthedocs.io/en/latest/algebra_definition.html.

Not saying that the builder or algebra mode in build123d are the correct ways of abstraction. However, reading through many discussions in the last few months around this topic, I believe that coming up with a simple and concise API to hide the complexity of e.g. open cascade is a very important part of an open source CAD application and its success.
The advantage of JupyterCAD is that it is GUI based - however, when you fall back to code, it shouldn’t be a pain.

[jgunstone]

it would also be great to support topologic which is also based on opencascade:
https://github.com/wassimj/Topologic
https://github.com/wassimj/topologicpy

[stefanv]

I'm curious if there were any further discussions along these lines? The algebra API for build123d is fantastic, and I'd love to see a powerful abstraction like that supported in JupyterCAD. Thanks, everyone, for all the hard work you've put into these tools!