connection to autocad

Hi!

Tarax want's a connection between autocad and kpm. I think it is the best when we make an import filter
for 3D DXF files. The 2D (vector and pixel based) import should be a designer, where you  can extrude
your image. Good thing it would be if you can put some (dxf) projections form diferent views together to a
3D model. That's an wonderfull thing, because if you have only a 2D cad, or 2D drawings, you can transform
 it to 3D very easy. This is very good for presentation, because an raytracer has more abilities to make a 'nice' 
picture/animation as a CAD program. 

At this point it is good to set your imported 3D Model (e.g. a house) in a scene. But where should it be placed?
in an empty space or on a flat plane? No, that's not very beautifuly, a real landscape would be fine. Somembody
say's a landscape generator would be a waste of time at this moment. I agree in some parts. Yes terraform is great
and it make no sense to rewrite this app, but importing and puting it in scene manualy is not very comfortable. 

My idea for connection to terraform: 
 1. selecting an menu entry / tool button for generating a landscape 
 2. kpm execute terraform
 3. create an landscape with terraform
 4. after saving in terraform, the pov-file could be imported by kpm's existing importing feature. (this is done automaticly)
 5. after closing terraform kpm, the imported data is added to your scene.

This could be implemented as a plugin. This is not so complex, thats why it could be one of the
first test-plugins for our not yet existing plugin api. 

Another way to import terraform data is that we make an import plugin (like the autocad dxf plugin)
for the terraform files. That give the user the possibility to insert always created landscapes in his scene.

BIG PROBLEM for all this ideas - the height field. Imagine you create a beatiful lanscape and after
importing it to kpm what did you see - the height field display as a box. Ok after rendering your scene you
see your landscape. But how you want to place some plot members (e.g. house, human, animal,...) in your
landscape? You see only a box with a water level, you are not able to locate a definite point in the height field
(this is a general problem of the height field) I think the height field has to be enhanced to show a simple
view of the height information. If this is done 2D importing, landscape generation and possible other things,
could be easiely made with some importing filters that assign pictures and some values to a height field.


But let me say a little bit about terraform. This is a gtk programm and this looks not so good in kde. If a
landscape generation tool for kde exists in the future we should heavily support this.

Usability:
The usability of ALL 3D modelers is often bad, because the production of a 3D scene is very complex.
The most people I know tryied to make scenes with all kind of software. But without the help of persons
how learned this they couldn't do so much. I think kpm should go another way. Ok the app has to be
complex (because there so much things yo can do), but the user could be guided by wizards. I think
we could make a scene creation wizard. If you make a new scene you can make an empty scene
(what we have yet) or launch the wizard. The wizard show several things (skies, grounds, rooms,...)
and after making your choice the wizard creates your environment. That speed up the creation
process a lot , because you only have to design your object (e.g. a house, a car,...).  

Another thing I whish to add to the wish list are groups in the object tree. At the moment I have to much
objects in my scene. I wish to group some objects. I didn't want a group that have an effect on rendering.
In pov-ray you can do this via include files. 
An example:
I create a toilete. this object has a lot of primitves, object links, csg's,... I know this could grouped with a csg,
but it is not possible to add object definitions to a csg. An this make no sense because it has an effect on the
render output. 
Hope you understand this :-)

Have a nice day.

Kevin

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