[Tugindia] POVRay: AutoCAD like?

[Kaveh Bazargan]

At 10:39 pm +0530 13/10/02, H S Rai wrote:
>A few days back CVR wrote:
>
>>  ...  enlighten users  with newer  technologies like  integration of
>>  Povray into TeX.
>
>I must thank CVR to introduce politely POVRay to subscribers. A lot of
>good  softwares  are available,  but  problem  is  how to  find  right
>one. Mostly we  limit our choice what  is available around us,  and we
>fail to do proper survey even in this era of information technology.
>
>As I could  undersatnd, POVRay is wonderful software  to create scenes
>and  even  animation. Can we  use  this  as an  "Engineering  Drawing"
>package such as AutoCAD. As most of engineers (Civil, Mechanical) need
>such package to produce orthogonal projection (Elevations, Plans) with
>dimensions, where rendering is not required.  Now my question is as:
>
>Can we  use POVRay for  this purpose? If  not, can anyone  suggest any
>other software available to fullfil such requirement.
>
>I  could not  find feature  equivalent to  "pline" of  AutoCAD in  any
>drafting packages (free/opensource) tried by  me on Linux so far. With
>"pline" you  can draw  a combination  of line segments  and arcs  in a
>variety  of way,  with different  line  width and  also variable  line
>width.

This is slightly off-topic, but I don't think povray can be used for this
purpose, i.e. in an interactive CAD mode. povray is merely a renderer for
3D scenes. But the fact that is purely code driver, rather like TeX, means
that we can potentially have pov files written out by TeX, rendered by
povray, and the files read back in by TeX. I have a feeling this can open
up a lot of possibilities in adding graphics to documents, e.g. 3D buttons
with text rendered on them. I am working hard on this idea and will keep
you informed of progress.
-- 

Kaveh Bazargan