Hi all!
Right, basically, I wish there was a program that was a virtual 3d graph paper. You can imagine how you could quite simply make a virtual 2d piece of graph paper, it'd be pretty much like a vector based drawing application. I'd really like something like that in 3d but *not* anything so complex as a 3d modelling and renderring program.
I've often thought while trying to draw a diagram about how easy it would be to do if you could do it on a 3d piece of paper. Today I was working through a problem involving spherical geometry, specifically converting between two different astronomy geometries. Trying to sketch this stuff on a 2d piece of paper sure gets confusing. If I could have a 3d grid and could simply click and drag to create spheres, planes, circles, lines or points etc and spin it around to look at it from different angles then that would be a dream come true.
Other useful features would be simple measurement of angles, lengths etc.
Basically, I want a 3D sketching tool for scientific use. As far as I can tell, there's nothing available like that. Its all either 2D stuff or 3D modelling software.
I'm ok with programming, I usually do more of the simulation type stuff but have had some experience in some other stuff and I'm willing to learn. I don't expect to be able to make everything work in twenty minutes, this would be a long term goal. What I don't know is how to start with this kind of thing. I'd need to create basically a 3D gui and that's the part I'm stuck on - I don't know which tools to use.
So, has anyone got any ideas on how I could start? Programming environments, plugins etc. Something that can easily display 3d models would be the starting point.
Spanky
Right, basically, I wish there was a program that was a virtual 3d graph paper. You can imagine how you could quite simply make a virtual 2d piece of graph paper, it'd be pretty much like a vector based drawing application. I'd really like something like that in 3d but *not* anything so complex as a 3d modelling and renderring program.
I've often thought while trying to draw a diagram about how easy it would be to do if you could do it on a 3d piece of paper. Today I was working through a problem involving spherical geometry, specifically converting between two different astronomy geometries. Trying to sketch this stuff on a 2d piece of paper sure gets confusing. If I could have a 3d grid and could simply click and drag to create spheres, planes, circles, lines or points etc and spin it around to look at it from different angles then that would be a dream come true.
Other useful features would be simple measurement of angles, lengths etc.
Basically, I want a 3D sketching tool for scientific use. As far as I can tell, there's nothing available like that. Its all either 2D stuff or 3D modelling software.
I'm ok with programming, I usually do more of the simulation type stuff but have had some experience in some other stuff and I'm willing to learn. I don't expect to be able to make everything work in twenty minutes, this would be a long term goal. What I don't know is how to start with this kind of thing. I'd need to create basically a 3D gui and that's the part I'm stuck on - I don't know which tools to use.
So, has anyone got any ideas on how I could start? Programming environments, plugins etc. Something that can easily display 3d models would be the starting point.
Spanky
