Computer Aided Design (CAD)

I am a computer engineer who is frustrated by the lack of open source CAD packages, so I wanted to start a discussion on what a CAD based off Geometric Algebra could look like.

  • How do you model a shape?
  • Compatibility with functional and boundary representations? (aka f-rep and b-rep)
  • Adding Constraints and free variables
  • Finite Element Analysis, Meshing and Topology Optimization
1 Like

Is FreeCAD https://freecadweb.org unsatisfactory for your use case? In my personal opinion it has a wide range of toolboxes. Maybe it cannot address your specific demands given above.
The FEM toolbox has interfaces to different solvers and allows access to certain mesh internals.

(Disclaimer: I contributed some code there.)

From my limited understanding of GA, I would think, that PGA is appropriate for CAD, since it models basic linear geometries intrinsically. Maybe CGA is also useful.

Grassmann.jl has built in support for finite element meshes and is designed from the ground up around doing finite element analysis. If anyone is interested in that, you need to reach out to me privately, as the egomaniac people on this forum want to suppress what I have to say.

@chakravala’s (original, and now this duplicated) account has been suspended for repeated insults, solicitation and pan handling. Feel free to lookup some of his old posts and don’t be fooled by this seemingly helpful first post.
You should make your own choices but my own attempts in interacting with this individual ended, after profanities and physical threats to my email, with insulting emails to my co authors and professors in the field.

There are many people active in CG and CAD on the bivector discord, if you ask there I’m sure you’ll find some like minded souls in no time.

Kind regards,

Steven

Regardless of personal relationships between these two, Grassmann.jl is state of the art when it comes to FEM and GA.

PGA is not a good choice for FEM since it doesn’t model non-euclidean transformations/objects in a nice way. Sadly I can’t give you an alternative algebra, more research is needed here.