BRL-CAD: Open-Source Solid Modeling

Re:BRL-CAD: Open-Source Solid Modeling by smartmic on Friday October 04, 2019 @05:35AM (#21156111)

Another fact I like to mention is that BRL-CAD is really a showcase for the UNIX philosophy (modularity&composition): There are 349 single programs in /usr/brlcad/bin. Man page says "brlcad - BRL-CAD programs for solid modeling, raytracing, graphics, and image processing" and lists 14 main categories of programs (comprising then many commands).

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Re:BRL-CAD: Open-Source Solid Modeling by agumonkey on Friday October 04, 2019 @05:38AM (#21156120)

reminds me of early 90s cgi programs from sgi/unix

they too were a collection of programs unlike MS MFC based applications that were a set of dll and a single interface

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Re:BRL-CAD: Open-Source Solid Modeling by newnewpdro on Friday October 04, 2019 @06:48AM (#21156420)

I haven't scrutinized the implementation of FreeCAD, but the various "workbenches" (if memory serves, I think that's what they were called) feel like they're implemented essentially as separate programs that just share some common frontend piece switching between them.

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Re:BRL-CAD: Open-Source Solid Modeling by imglorp on Friday October 04, 2019 @07:37AM (#21156609)

Yep it maximized reuse and testability. Little shell programs can be tested easily, used at the CLI, and then called from the UI, which just becomes a wrapper. Makes sense to me.

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