Antimony

http://www.mattkeeter.com/projects/antimony/3/. MIT License = OSI/OSE approved

Antimony is a computer-aided design (CAD) tool from a parallel universe in which CAD software evolved from Lisp machines rather than drafting tables.

foundations

Antimony is built on three mostly-orthogonal axes: A framework for tracking information flow through directed acyclic graphs A geometry engine for doing CSG A standard library of shapes and transforms

Graph engine

Solid modeling in Antimony is done by connecting nodes in a graph. Each node is defined by a customizable script. Antimony uses Python 3.x plus a few extra magic keywords. Nodes usually represent a primitive shape or transform. Links are tracked and changes are automatically propagated downstream.

Geometry engine

Antimony's geometry engine uses functional representations for solid modeling. This representation is particularly suitable for modeling with boolean operations (union / intersection / difference).

In the application, the geometry engine renders shapes as shaded bitmaps. They're then blitted to a 3D viewport.

Antimony can export heightmaps for 2.5D processes and .stl files for 3D manufacturing. The .stl export includes feature detection to keep corners and edges sharp.

Standard library

Antimony's standard library defines many shapes and transforms, from basic (rotate, scale, boolean operations) to unusual (attract, repel, bend).

These shapes are used in node definitions, which typically add input and output ports and can optionally define UI features.

Development

Antimony is a long-running project under active development. It's at a beta level of stability: solid, but not recommended for mission-critical use.

A prebuilt Mac application can be downloaded from the Github releases page. Antimony's source is available on Github, along with instructions for building it on Mac and Linux.

If you're interested in contributing, there's a pretty low bar for entry. Given basic Python knowledge, you can get started making custom nodes.

For more ambitious folks with C++ experience, there are a whole host of improvements that could be made, from speeding up rendering to cleaning up the UI and optimizing graph evaluation. Send me a note if this piques your interest.

history

Antimony grew out of my work on powerful personal-scale CAD/CAM workflows at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms.

It's the latest tool in a line of software that included cad_ui and kokopelli, and draws inspiration from fabserver.