Newbie question: Sub-interpreters for CAD program

[Terry Hancock]

On Thursday 25 August 2005 09:13 am, Peter Hansen wrote:
> Terry Hancock wrote:
> > On Wednesday 24 August 2005 09:12 pm, Peter Hansen wrote:
> >>Or even http://www.pythoncad.org/ which, although probably for 
> >>mechanical CAD work (I haven't looked at it, don't really know), is 
> >>surely a good place to get ideas of what Python can do in this area.
> > 
> > No, I doubt it.  PythonCAD is a 2D mechanical CAD drawing system.
> > I don't think it would be anywhere near what this guy wants.  They're
> > just different applications. He's looking for an electronic CAD system or
> > EDA, I'm pretty sure (or looking to write one, rather).
> 
> As an engineer who's worked extensively in both kinds of systems 
> (primarily designing microcontroller-based circuit boards), and a 
> programmer who's stolen useful ideas from endless amounts of other 
> people's code, I'll say only that I disagree with your implication that 
> looking at PythonCAD will give him no useful ideas whatsoever 

Heh. Well I didn't use the word "whatsoever" did I. ;-)

No you're right, if you're looking to write code from the ground-up, then
it's certainly true that this would help.  But I pointed him at Gnu EDA,
because it already seems to do *most* of what he was looking for, I think.

There's also PCB and zcircuit to be considered.  All of these are C language
programs, I believe, and he's already an experienced C/C++ programmer it
would seem.

OTOH, PythanCAD serves as an example of why he might be better off
to *write* the CAD program in Python and use C/C++ extension modules
as needed, instead of embedding Python into a C/C++ application.

But I kind of got the impression he was attached to using C++ for the job,
which would not be *my* choice, but is certainly preferred by a lot of
programmers.

There is another, community-oriented reason for writing it in Python and
looking at PythonCAD, of course. It would not be unreasonable to write
an EDA/PCB/autorouter application that worked IN PythonCAD.  That
would be pretty cool.  It would also be a good way to leverage community
support for the project.

But I have a feeling this is not going to be the way the OP will want to go,
since he came asking only how to embed Python into a C/C++ application.

--
Terry Hancock ( hancock at anansispaceworks.com )
Anansi Spaceworks  http://www.anansispaceworks.com