3D Vector Type Line-Drawing Program

[Scott David Daniels]

Ron Adam wrote:
> Scott David Daniels wrote:
>> Ron Adam wrote:
>>> ... Is there a way to have the display show a wire frame image instead of 
>>> shaded shapes?
>> You can draw the edges as lines.
> 
> Is there a setting for this?, or are you suggesting reading the 
> coordinates and creating curve objects for the edges?
Nope, you'd have to make a poly line which was the wire frame, but it
would then rotate and such with the rest of the model.  Essentially
you would, for each primitive, have a wire-frame and a volumetric
version, and keep one of the two visible (with the other invisible)
at all times.

>>> Is there an easy way to convert a display to something that can be 
>>> printed?
>>
>> You can generate POV-ray source.  This is not a system for creating
>> beautiful pictures, but rather a great 3-D sketch pad.

Now POV-ray _will_ create beautiful pictures, but the texturing,
shading, and lighting control that POV-ray gives you exceeds that
of VPython.  You could use VPython to get you model built and view-
point placed, and the tweak the POV-ray code to get pretty output.

--Scott David Daniels
scott.daniels at acm.org