Re: CAD - rendering bent pipes

Chris,

Here's a few possibilities:

GMAX: not open source but free and relatively easy for scripting
complex functions. You could loft the spline and scale along length
or loft between diferent sized shapes.
No rendering as such but OpenGL/DirectX shaded viewports, with
screencapture ? or export as an .mdx ( quake ) file to another
renderer ? see:
http://www.discreet.com/products/gmax/gmaxconsumer/index.html
My page on scripting with GMAX's commercial big brother,3D Studio
MAX, will give you an idea of what the scripting can do, but GMAX has
quite a few features disabled :
http://www.rainnea.com/cnc_software.htm

However, VTK or similar is perhaps more what your looking for:
http://public.kitware.com/VTK/
and
http://www.esat.kuleuven.ac.be/~vtkedit/index.shtml

or,
http://www.varkon.com/man.htm

Perhaps Blender ?
http://www.blender.nl/

and there would probably be something implemented via OpenGL ?
http://www.opengl.org/

Good luck,
let us know how you get on

Rab

--- In CAD_CAM_EDM_DRO@y..., ccs@m... wrote:
>
> Does anyone know of a free/gpl/etc library that could be easily
> used to render calculated 3d surfaces under windows or linux/X?