Scheme Cad is a programmable 3D CAD tool that currently supports wireframe models and features animation. Users can program Scheme Cad by writing extensions in Scheme (a dialect of LISP).
Examples and documentation are provided online and in the distribution. Scheme Cad includes a full-blown REPL interpreter which promotes incremental development: you can write small pieces of code and test them right away, without having to compile and restart.
Scheme Cad runs on Windows and Linux, is free to use and is only a small (under 1M) download away. Give it a try and let us know what you like about it and how we can make it even better.
Download the Scheme Cad Windows binaries or Linux binaries. Both are zip files under 1M in size.
Unzip the downloaded binary in some location, then run cad.bat (on Windows) or cad.sh (on Linux).
The program will display a graphics window containing a simple tetrahedron model and a prompt at the bottom. Click and drag the mouse to rotate the model.
Next, try to load a more interesting model: type (load "mesh-demo.scm") in the CAD window, then press ENTER.
Finally, activate animation by typing (load "anim-demo.scm"). The model will spin with random angular velocities. To stop, type stop-anim.
With Scheme Cad, you get the full power of Scheme to transform the model or create your own data-entry primitives.
To define top-level commands, simply define a function with the c: prefix. For example, here's how the "e" built-in command is defined:
(define (c:e) (let* ((n1 (cad-read "First index:")) (n2 (cad-read "Second index:"))) (edge n1 n2)))
(load "mesh.scm") (define (f x y) (+ x y)) (mesh '(-2 -1 0 1 2) '(-2 -1 0 1 2) f)
anim-demo.scm.
Also read default.scm
, mesh.scm
, mesh-demo.scm
and anim-demo.scm
. You can modify default.scm
to make a
custom set of primitives available at start-up.