CADCloud Video introduction

[vejmarie]

Hi,

Following my work on Mac, and a couple of bug fixes, I have created a small video introduction of CADCloud, a project I created about 18 months ago and aims to run some proof of concept of what could be a github like approach for CAD based on FreeCAD. Everything is open source under an MIT license, if you want to help me feel free. The project is now hosted under the Open Compute Project Foundation github repo.

CADCloud couldn't be existing without FreeCAD. A special thanks to @yorik, @apeltauer, @sliptonic and all FreeCAD contributor. I still have a crazy amount of work in front of me, but I really like what i can start to do with the tool.

phpBB [video]

vejmarie

[Kunda1]

Congrats!

[watsug]

Really cool!
Is this more for sharing big open source projects, or can it be used for a "personal" way to work on the same files from two different locations? And when the files are viewed online, are they triangulated to meshes?

[tom]

Does it preserve the FreeCAD file format when uploading to the cloud? If so, how the CADCloud ensures a compatible data exchange with other CAD programs? If not, how can I continue to work on my FreeCAD document, which was only saved in CADCloud?

BR Tom

[Kunda1]

Does it preserve the FreeCAD file format when uploading to the cloud? If so, how the CADCloud ensures a compatible data exchange with other CAD programs? If not, how can I continue to work on my FreeCAD document, which was only saved in CADCloud?

@vejmarie this is one of those questions that should be in a FAQ, since it will be asked a lot.

[dcapeletti]

Excellent project.
I have a problem while logging in, I have edited the start_container file with the data:

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export SMTP_SERVER=smtp.googlemail.com
export SMTP_ACCOUNT=d.a.x@gmail.com
export SMTP_PASSWORD=hgtismoajus

Then I executed

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build_docker

then

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docker run --privileged --name cadcloud -p 443:443 cadcloud

then

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docker exec -it cadcloud /bin/bash

and inside the console

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./start_container&

Everything went well, I logged in with firefox at https://127.0.0.1 and I don't know what access data to enter to log in. I put the data I configured in SMTP_* but it didn't work.

How do I create an account and login?

Thanks

[sliptonic]

If, hypothetically, someone wanted to improve the CADcloud workbench, is there more to the API?

For example, can I query the server for a list of projects in my account?
Can I search for projects by keyword?

[vocx]

Really cool!
Is this more for sharing big open source projects, or can it be used for a "personal" way to work on the same files from two different locations? And when the files are viewed online, are they triangulated to meshes?

It is a cloud storage, you can use it with a team, but also for personal use.

And about triangulation, no matter where you view the files, 3D geometry is always triangulated to meshes, even in your local computer. This is exactly how computer graphics work; everything is represented as triangles.

As far as I can tell, the CADCloud server converts the FreeCAD file to OBJ format (mesh file) to display it online.

https://github.com/vejmarie/CADCloud/bl ... go#L80-L96

[vocx]

Does it preserve the FreeCAD file format when uploading to the cloud?...

If I'm not mistaken, there were some changes introduced to the core XML reader of FreeCAD, to be able to handle the XML data in the cloud. See #2454.

The transmission of data from FreeCAD to the cloud should be without loss of information. It's the same type of data, just in a remote location. But this only refers to the FreeCAD format; you won't be able to magically share the objects with other CAD programs. Maybe a converter could be added to convert the shapes to STEP format, to be able to load them into other CAD programs, but then you won't have parametric FreeCAD objects, just a collection of STEP files.

[vejmarie]

Does it preserve the FreeCAD file format when uploading to the cloud? If so, how the CADCloud ensures a compatible data exchange with other CAD programs? If not, how can I continue to work on my FreeCAD document, which was only saved in CADCloud?

BR Tom

Yes it is using FreeCAD file format. The only one difference is that except than being archived into a big Zip it does transfer each files (shape and XML's from workbenchs) to the backend. The technology is based on AWS s3 protocol using either SHA-1 or SHA-256 (still under implementation) signature. So when you restore data from it, it is a pure FreeCAD format.