I'm proud to announce the future of Shapesmith, dubbed "Shapesmith.next". This is a reference to the next version of Javascript, ES.next, since Shapesmith is now a pure Javascript application.
I have been working on some big changes to Shapesmith that makes it vastly more usable to create and edit models - the introduction of a workplane. The workplane will be the basis for mouse interaction when creating primitives, doing transformations etc. The workplane is centered at (0,0,0) at the moment, with no ability to move it around, but that's coming.
Workplanes, or local reference planes, are very useful things. Often when designing a 3D model, you work within a reference plane. For example, if you are building a car, you might create a reference plane at each wheel location, so modelling each wheel is easier. It allows you to focus on the local work area without distraction.
I'm happy to announce that the first version of STL import is now available in Shapesmith (0.9.1) and online at cloud.shapesmith.net. This means you can import STL files like the Apparently Impossible Cube from Thingiverse.
Up to now, you might have been able to build some really nice models with Shapesmith, but you couldn't share them except for exporting the printable STL version. What if you wanted to publish something for others to customize or improve? Now you can export and import models in a native JSON format, so you can publish and share your designs with others.
It all started with an airfoil. I created Shapesmith because I wanted to design & 3D print a UAV, and the tools available were not what I wanted. Well, I'm happy to announce that I (and YOU*) can design bezier-based, parametric airfoils with Shapesmith 0.7
If you look at Shapesmith's Github repository you might get the impression that not much is happening with Shapesmith. But the opposite is true so I want to tell you what's been happening and what will happen in the next couple of months.
When I started Shapesmith, my vision was to create a simple, yet powerful 3D modelling application. Up to a few weeks ago my main focus was on creating a strong technical foundation that I could build on, and I'm quite pleased with the current architecture. Usability had been important, but not the top priority. This has changed.
I'm happy to announce some great new additions and changes to Shapesmith that I've been working on for the last 6 weeks. These have been deployed online and version 0.3 on github.
This has taken a bit longer than I had hoped! Welcome to the Shapesmith blog and my first post about shapesmith.net. This is a quick update on the project and the plans for the near future.
Since posting on my blog about working on this project, progress has been steady but slow. I have made some progress in terms of user features (such as undo/redo, saving of models and validation), but the majority of work has gone into making the backend lean and mean. Most noteworthy is the separation of api, database and worker components.