September 3rd/4th

[franknoirot]

CAD-related News from the Week

• Nothing to report from the wider world this week, but created this segment to hold space for new like it in the future.

Kurt @Irev-Dev

Worked On:

• Upgraded Redwood from a couple versions behind, broke fonts for a bit because of Tailwind import changes that came with it
• Made a number of changes to the way CAD Docker lambdas work:
  • Now using same Redwood build process to build the JS, was previously Node Vanilla, so now it feels the same as the JS from the rest of the app.
  • Removed S3 to try to remove the double-wait situation. Seems to have improvements but not stellar.
• Started thinking about the backend more generally, has a rough outline. Wants to create a way for background jobs and assets to be persisted. Previously has been a "cache", not really connected to the rest of the data or platform, and everything self-deleted after 5 days.
  • Want to kick off a job that saves an asset permanently, so that it will fetch the office right away, will make OpenSCAD have a 3D asset straight away.
  • Part of the reason I introduced S3 is that 10Mb hard limit on the API gateway, but there was no GZIPing happening.
    More News:
• JSCAD core maintainer got back from sabbatical, and he approved the CadHub integration!
• Have a few more things to get done on the checklist issue by hrg, but none are critical.
• There was some discussion about adding a worker, Kurt will look at that part before setting live
• Main thing to do is add JSCAD as an enum to the types of projects able to
• Jeremy (@jmwright) wanted to know if the customizer's requirements were becoming stable, and Kurt wrote him up requirements for what CadQuery would need to be compatible. Might be a basic Int, Number, Strings, and Bools to start, but he is aiming to get that done in September!

Hrg @hrgdavor

• Eager to see JSCAD fully integrated, especially now that he is officially a part of the JSCAD team!
• The worker changes mentioned by @Irev-Dev are shifted toward integrating new worker into JSCAD, instead of CadHub, so it is then included along with JSCAD library as part of the integration dependency.

Frank @franknoirot

• Had a rethink of the home page design and wrote out the text outline in a copy doc (Link to come)
• Wants to feature more user work instead and do the riff on the donut on the About page.
  • use DREI for R3F niceties
  • @hrgdavor mentioned https://github.com/gkjohnson/threejs-sandbox, really likes some styling options they have like this conditional line, papery look, wants to have it available as a theme in JSCAD at some point.
• Will ask Kurt for help because he's bad at writing blog posts.
• Been think about node editors lately like React Flow as an affordance someday for users that think that way
  • Torsten mentioned IceStudio and BlocksCAD
  • @hrgdavor and @Irev-Dev don't like block coding setups at all, and Hrg doesn't like nodes either.
  • @franknoirot would love to think about how a plugin ecosystem might work for CadHub, so someone else who cares about developing things like that can have a go.
• Think we should take another look at the Roadmap
  • @Irev-Dev is still a little unsatisfied with the backend and the bones, but feels it is getting truly close
  • Next wants to spend time building the community and getting more content on the platform
  • Then ready for more technical projects like the side panel, multi-file support, GitHub™️, robust search

Torsten @t-paul

• Wanted to discuss comment about the customizer and STL
  • Kurt: Currently tries its best to get the STL while working in the customizer.
  • If the process doesn't get done in 30s you can no longer download an STL.
  • Would like it to create the background jobs to extend that life cycle and let the user know when the asset is ready.
  • To begin with the notification could be an email if it's really long wait, but in the future creating an in-app way to notify the user.
• Torsten needs to check because his understanding was that the issue might be that the customizer download isn't respecting the customizer setting.