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Blender, FreeCAD and External Editors

A project log for BowlerStudio: A robotics development platform

Make cooler robots, faster and with less effort.

kevin-harringtonKevin Harrington 07/10/2024 at 19:390 Comments

Today I announce a major update to BowlerStudio!

With release 2.34.0 I have added across all platforms the "Advanced Editors" suit. This suit consists of a set of applications that provide additional features to BowlerStudio. Some files need a more advanced aditor, or a special editor entirely, but are files that can be used in BowlerStudio.
* Eclipse - An IDE for Groovy scripts that provides debugging

* ArduinoIDE v2 - Compile and upload microcontoroller code

* Inkscape - 2d Vector graphics editor. THe vectors are extruded in BowlerStudio into shapes

* Blender - Provides artistic mesh modeling and advanced mesh repair tools

* FreeCAD - Paraametric Sketch and Extrude style CAD modeler

These tools can be launched as needed, and will be downloaded on-the-fly from a curated list of download links. The download targets are json files in the users directory and can be edited by the user if need be.
Blender files and FreeCAD files are now treated as first class file formats by bowlerstudio. They cna be opened and managed in git, and when "run" they are passed to the editor to generate a CSG object. You can use links to FreeCAD or Blender files in any code and manipulate them like any other mesh generating file.
ModileBases and VItalimins UI now accepts scripts as vitamins. For each base and each link there is a list of vitamins and thier locations withing the frame. Now you can hang any script on a mobileBase frame and jog it around. You can finally design an entire robot without using code for any of it!.

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