Hypertriton CADTools is an open-source 3D computer-aided
design (CAD) and manufacturing (CAM) toolkit built around an parametric,
feature-based, sketch-driven 3D
solid modeler.
A lot of effort is being put into the user interface so that new users will
find the program simple to learn, and experienced engineers will be able
to work as efficiently as possible.
The 2D sketching and 3D assembly capabilities of CADTools are built
around graph-directed algebraic constraint solvers, which are critical
components for achieving this goal.
This project is in early but highly active development.
We are using the Agar GUI library and
the FreeSG 3D engine (most code being
written for this project is actually in FreeSG).
Both CADTools and its dependencies are available under a
BSD license,
which will make CADTools particularly suitable for integration into
commercial products such as CNC machinery.
It should be noted that CADTools is intended to be complementary to
BRL-CAD, which is a very
powerful and extremely mature open-source CAD system.
BRL-CAD uses
constructive solid geometry,
while CADTools is sketch-driven and uses the
boundary representation,
two very different systems, either having their own advantanges and
inconvenients.
At some point, we will be looking into using components from BRL-CAD,
such as its raytracing library.
Both projects share the same goal of bringing a complete CAD system to
the open source world.
The CAM part of CADTools provides a client interface to the
machctl
daemon which can either be used to directly control machine tools, or
compile RS-274 code (G-code).
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