Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Moving Forward

Hello,

Well I am back from vacation and ready to dig in.  I got a nice chance to relax and contemplate some of the upcoming work I want to accomplish.  I also got a chance to think about what I want to prioritize and what I really need help on.

First, my highest priorities are getting both STL output and all of the remaining geometric intersection routines working.  Neither of these is too terribly difficult, but intersection will just be quite time consuming with lots of little details that need to be taken care of.  STL will be great to have so that the RepRap team can possibly start to try out Wildcat.

Second, I continue to get many requests for more Windows features and a Linux port.  I really really really want to support these platforms.  It is very important to me that Wildcat be able to include as many users as possible, and the entire kernel is being written as very platform agnostic.  But, I simply do not have the time to support these platforms myself.  Sadly, I am a Mac guy, enjoy programming for OSX, and have little desire or need to learn more platforms.  So, what I hope is out there is someone willing to help me pickup the slack for these two platforms.  The work should be mostly UI related as the kernel will continue to be developed for all three platforms.

Lastly, my "real" job is as a Ph.D. student.  For my sanity and my future I need to make sure that this keeps moving forward which will require more of my attention for the next few years.  Wildcat has been my obsession for the past three years and will continue to see significant effort from me, but I need to dial it back a bit.  Don't worry, Wildcat will still be updated almost daily, but the blog and documentation effort will see a bit of a hit.

I hope that everyone understands.  And thank you to all of the people that have voiced their support for this project.  I am happy to go it alone, but knowing that others are out there makes this journey much more fun.

Cheers,
   Graham

6 comments:

Dan Heeks said...

Graham, I am impressed by your energy so far. Please don't stop. I haven't compiled WildCat for a while because, since leaving work, I don't have a full version of Visual Studio. This will change soon. I have got some part-time work developing software and will be getting Visual Studio 2005 Pro as part of that.
Can you post a link to some screenshots of the Mac version to get us excited, some time, as I don't really have an idea of what your software should be capable of.

Forrest Higgs said...

Dan,

Why don't you see if Visual Studio Express will do for your needs temporarily? It's a free download. I've found that it covers about 95% of my needs. :-)

Kyle Corbitt said...

What features aren't implemented in the Windows version?

I second the request for screenshots! This is a great effort, you are doing good work.

Dan Heeks said...

Forrest, I have Visual Studio 2008 Express, but it does not have any of the MFC ( so I get "Cannot open include file: 'afxwin.h'" ) . I am using it fine with wxWidgets to make some open source CAD/CAM software based using Open CASCADE for the solid modelling. ( see my new blog www.heekscnc.blogspot.com )

Erik de Bruijn said...

Wow, seems like a nice package.

I'd love to beta test on linux whenever it's anywhere near runnable. For development I'd like to focus on RepRap development right now, but I might deviate from my plans ;)

GrahamH said...

Erik,

I am excited about getting some RepRap integration going. If you do have some time we would love to have an extra pair of hands helping us out.

Cheers,
Graham