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ed3.readme
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-------------------------------------------------------------------
ED3, a primitive 3D editor for use with NU3, a primitive 3D viewer.
-------------------------------------------------------------------
This is version 1.1, the 1st real release. There is a lot of work left to do.
This version is placed in the public domain by it's author, Ben Discoe.
The author is a firm believer in the hacker ethic. Use at your own risk. If
you like this program, use it, use pieces of its code, or even find it
vaguely interesting, please let me know!
The main purpose of this program is to play with polyhedra and "geodesic"
structures. However, it is very general-purpose so you could use it for any
sort of 3D world-design. The only other 3D editor I have ever used is the
one in Sculpt-3D (back in 1987) so I don't know how they might compare to
ed3. The files that ed3 loads and saves are not in any standard format,
so you can't just load Sculpt, Imagine or Turbo Silver objects.
ed3 can compile into a integer version or a floating-point version. The
floating-point version is highly recommended for people with fast CPUs,
math coprocessors, or the need for high accuracy.
Before running: make sure you have the req.library in your LIBS:
directory. It's included in this archive case you don't have it already.
There's only one command line option: -w will start ed3 on your workbench
screen. Sorry, Workbench fans, no ToolTypes stuff.
I've just realized that the program has developed completely lacking
documentation, so I'll now make a doomed attempt to at least notify you of
what features are available:
*****************************************************************************
G A D G E T S
ADD Puts you in Add Point mode. Click either button to add points.
DELETE Puts you in Delete Point mode. Click to delete points - which
button you use affects things - see below.
SELECTOR This gives you the selector tool, which selects/deselects points.
Double-click to select-connected (or deselect-connected).
MOVE Puts you in Move mode. Click to select a point, shift-click to
select more points. Once the points are selected, you can drag
to move them.
FACE Puts you in Add Face mode. A Face in ED3 means a triangular face.
In this mode, click on any three points to create a Face.
POLY Puts you in Add Polygon mode. A Polygon in ED3 means a polygon
with more than 3 vertices. This distinction between Faces and
Polygons is important to programs that, for example, only
support planar faces.
(ADDP) You are put in this mode when connecting points for a Face or
Polygon.
DEFACE Lets you specify three points to remove a Face.
DEFACE Lets you specify N points to remove a Poly.
ROTATE In Rotate mode, click once to specify the axis of rotation,
then move the mouse around this point to the desired angle
and click once more. All points will rotate.
ZOOM Lets you change the degree of magnification. In Zoom mode, click
the first button to zoom in towards a location, second button to
zoom out away from a location. Try it, it's one of my favorite
features.
DISTANCE The Distance tool is a "ruler" for measuring distance in 3D space.
Both ends can be dragged around, or "attached" to points by
double-clicking near the intended point. The distance (length
of the distance tool) appears in the upper right corner.
GLUE Glue will "merge" the the point closest to the pointer and the
point closest to it. All degenerations are handled correctly.
UNDO If you find a bug in Undo/Redo, let me know. It's a fairly
REDO tricky feature. It's also fairly uncommon in 3d editors.
XY, XZ, YZ Specify the orthogonal direction of view.
> 3D < Currently, viewing your object from a 3D perspective requires
a separate program, NU3, which supports several different
hidden-line algorithms. Someday this capability may merge
with ED3.
COLOR gadgets. These affect the color of the faces you define which is
only displayed by the 3D viewer NU3.
*****************************************************************************
M E N U S
Since the right button is used to select points, the pointer must be over
the menu bar to access the menus.
Menu options:
PROJECT Normal stuff. "Save Defaults" saves the settings of the "Options"
menu to a file called ed3-defs, which is automatically loaded the
next time you start.
EDIT No clipboard support yet. The Duplicate menu makes an exact in-place
copy of all selected points and the facets connecting them. Erase
kills the selected points and the facets connecting them. The bottom three
options aren't completely implemented.
POLYHEDRA These are some basic polyhedra. You can use them as
starting points for constructing really wild, complex
polyhedra using the special features described below.
SPECIAL
-------
FREQUENCY This is one of the two Really Neat features of ED3.
This will divide each triangular (or quadrilateral) face into
a set of smaller triangles, where the number of resultant triangles is
frequency squared. Try this on your favorite polyhedra, then Normalize to
get pseudo-geodesic structures. The reason why I say psuedo is because if
you use this method with any ODD frequency, the resulting location of
vertices does not truly correlate to subdiving the geodesicic arcs described
by the polyhefron edges. It is, however, very close, close enough for a
crude program such as ED3. You could theoretically raise a form to any large
frequency, although you are, naturally, limited by your memory size.
FIND DUAL This is the second Really Neat feature.
Every fully-connected polyhedron has a dual, which is formed
by exchanging the configuration of faces with vertices. For example, the
cube's dual is the octahedron, and the icosahedron's dual is the pentagon
dodecahedon. Complex geodesic structures also have their duals, which are
typically complex "fly's eye" structures involving many hexagons. Naturally,
a dual of a dual is the original shape.
UNFOLD This is a future Really Neat feature.
NORMALIZE This finds the center of all points and adjusts all points
to lie the average distance from that center. Simply stated,
it makes all points Spherical. Use to project flat tesselated faces onto
their geodesics.
STELLATE This will take every face and make a pyramid out of it,
giving a "3D star" based on whatever shape you are using.
Combining this feature with "Find Dual" can be used to form truncated forms
of polyhedra. Try it.
CENTER->ORIGIN Moves all points so that their vector sum is centered on the
origin.
OPTIONS
-------
ASSUME POLYHEDRON tell the features on the Special menu (notably Find Dual
and Normalize) to assume that the shape you're working with
is a polyhedron. Set this option whenever you DO have a
polyhedron.
ROTATE EVERYTHING tells the rotate command to rotate all points, not only
the selected points.
UNDO BUFFER ACTIVE turns the undo/redo buffer on or off. If you playing with
very large shapes or have little memory, you may want to
turn this off.
SET UNDO BUFFER SIZE will affect the undo buffer only at the next time you
start ed3 - it doesn't change or damage your current undo
buffer.
(A 3D CONVEX HULL algorithm is yet another future Really Neat feature)
*****************************************************************************
More functionality available from the keyboard:
ESC Quits.
C Toggles the crosshair.
D Toggles the distance tool.
M Same as the Move button.
U Same as Undo button.
R Same as Redo button.
8 and 2 The ED3 "pointer" really exists in 3 dimensions, as its location is
displayed near the title bar. 8 and 2 (chosen for their location in
the keypad) move the pointer "far" and "near", in whatever direction
isn't available using the mouse.
SHIFT Used to multiple-select points (just like a GUI should) in MOVE mode.
SPACE BAR This is a commonly used key! Since your structure can get
very large, you may not want to refresh the screen after every
operation, especially on a 68000 machine. Therefore, redraw is
triggered by the space bar so it occurs only when you want it to.
*****************************************************************************
On the use of the Left and Right Mouse Buttons to select points:
LEFT button will select the point closest to the pointer ON THE SCREEN,
RIGHT button will select the point closest IN 3D SPACE to the 3D location of
the ED3 pointer. This is tricky to use, but essential when you've
got lots of points that are othogonal to the 3D axes, making the Left
button unreliable. I typically Rotate the structure instead, giving
each point a unique mapping onto the screen, then use the left
button.
*****************************************************************************
About the Author
----------------
I dropped out of Caltech for two reasons. First, my brain fried on the
Quantum Physics and EE (i'm a programmer, not a physicist). Second, I was
spending too much time with my hobby, 3D geometry, which no one was
interested in teaching me about. ED3 and NU3 were projects that evolved out
of this hobby and were written casually during a few months of unemployment
in Berkeley in early summer 1990. I recently revived them, added a ton
of stuff, and released 1.0.
I am currently (10/17/91) employed (and reachable) at
preferably: rodent@netcom.com (a public-access site)
Ben Discoe
Versasoft Corp.
4340 Almaden Expr. #110
San Jose, CA 95118
Read ED3.tech (and the source) for technical notes.