Show HN: 3D Meshes of Signed Distance Functions in Python

Hi HN.<p>Well, I wanted to make a 3D model and 3D print it, but I just didn&#x27;t want to use OpenSCAD. So I ended up making a whole new 3D modeling library based on signed distance functions. I&#x27;m pretty happy with how it turned out so far, so I thought I would write a nice README and share it here.<p>It&#x27;s certainly complete enough that you could try it out and make your own 3D models - let me know if you make anything interesting!

Not sure how this will be received in HN, but I just want to say... when I grow up, I want to be like fogleman :-). Just look at his portfolio of truly great projects [1].<p>Something that I find inspiring in his work is that he seems to use pretty !boring! tech (imho). No rust?! No lisp&#x2F;reactive&#x2F;functional&#x2F;esoteric programming!? what?! You can&#x27;t be cool if you use mainstream tech like go or python, right? Well, it turns out, you can!<p>Well done sir :-)<p>1: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.michaelfogleman.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.michaelfogleman.com&#x2F;</a>

It would be really cool to have a library like this that could spit out a shader for real-time rendering with ray marching on your GPU and then use marching cubes to compute the final STL when you’re done prototyping.

I am also a big fan of iquilez, and a little fed up with openscad. I recently tried out deadsy&#x2F;sdfx, a similar tool written in golang. I was impressed and I enjoyed using it, but there was a little too much friction when I had a complicated design that I just wanted to make and print ASAP.<p>I&#x27;m a little more comfortable in python, plus I think the language is better suited to this, as a DSL or something like it. I&#x27;ll definitely try it out, thank you for sharing.

Really neat! I can use this for CFD simulations where geometries need to be optimized; OpenFOAM should snap on to these stls just fine! <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openfoam.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;guides&#x2F;latest&#x2F;doc&#x2F;guide-meshing-snappyhexmesh.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.openfoam.com&#x2F;documentation&#x2F;guides&#x2F;latest&#x2F;doc&#x2F;gui...</a>

Nice! Do you have any plans to publish to PyPI? Is there an API to access numpy array containing the evaluated SDF volume?

Impressive work!<p>CadQuery is another library for programming 3d-models in Python. A good alternative to OpenSCAD. Has integration in FreeCAD but can also be used stand-alone.

Most Engineering software uses surface models or meshes today. Are there specific advantages of using SDFs here instead?

Looks pretty cool! Kind of reminds me of Google sketchup but in code.

Is it ok if I make a Blender node system out of this?

Is it possible to plug these into a VR&#x2F;AR system?

Very cool, love the simple syntax