[PythonCAD] dwgbase.py wins

[Art Haas]

On Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 06:50:07AM -0600, Eric Wilhelm wrote:
>
> Is there any formal documentation for the dwg*.py modules besides that which 
> is inline in the source? Would you like some more?
> 

Not really. I'd like to have much more documentation available,
particularly on the web pages, but haven't made the effort to due this.
I'd like to avoid duplicating work, so an ideal solution would be
something that takes the doc-string from the code and extracts them into
nice web pages. A program to do this may already exist, but I don't know
for sure.

> Is there any sort of test suite set-up?  Should I write one?

There isn't any sort of test suite, and writing one would be good. One
thing I found when reading a DWG file is that things either work or the
fail spectacularly, as errors in decoding the bit-streams in the DWG
format will quickly cause the reading code to do the wrong thing.

> 
> How about sample usage scripts?
> 

Those would be great. Once a few of these are written by people other
than myself I am certain that some missing functionality will be
revealed, or a better way of presenting the DWG data can be developed.

> Also, can you summarize the current status of its capabilities?  (e.g. 
> read/write dxf/dwg)

There is no writing capability yet for either DWG/DXF formats. The
reading of DWG formats is currently R12, R13, R14, and R15. Based on the
sample files I have the readers pick up nearly all the entities in the
drawings successfully, but there are one or two entity types that aren't
read in because the OpenDWG docs don't describe them. DXF file handling
is still little more than printing the entities out, but dealing with
DXF files is much simpler than DWG files, so adding code for improving
the handling of these files should be straightforward.

Art

-- 
Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities
the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.

-Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822