Getting Started

How does JIPCAD work?

The JIPCAD proprietary language is built around specifying meshes, groups, and instances. Meshes and groups can be turned into instances, which are then displayed on the UI.

A mesh is any generator that creates a shape and is defined within JIPCAD. These basic generators can be found here, and can be combined in order to create more advanced and geometrically complicated shapes. Generators have parameters that further specify their shape and look, which allows for more flexibility in design. A call to a generator takes the form:

generator name_of_generator (condition_1 condition_2 ...) endgenerator

A group is a number of meshes that have been 'grouped' together into a new mesh, that can then be treated as a singular object and have operations performed on it. This allows for scalability in the design of more complicated shapes.

An instance of either a mesh or a group is created in order to actually display an object in the scene. Multiple instances of the same mesh or group can also be created.

Further operations such as point selection, face deletion, line sweeps, subdivision, screen panning and rotation, etc.) can then be performed once the scene is loaded.

The NOME application can be either downloaded on Windows here or compiled using CMake on Mac/Linux, with compilation instructions found here. To use the compiled application, open NOME.exe and load in a .NOM file. .NOM files can be written with any text editor, so long as the default extension type (such as .txt) is overwritten with ".nom". However, our recommended text editor is VSCode(download link), as it includes extensions developed for easier modeling in JIPCAD. Once selected, the scene in the .NOM file will be rendered into the crystal-ball interface and can then be interacted with.

Generators and more complex shapes (ex. sweeps, combinations of generators, etc.) must be defined and instantiated on the .NOM file prior to rendering in the application, but once a scene is rendered then faces/vertices can be deleted, objects can be subdivided, the time variable can be used to pan the screen, etc.

JIPCAD Language Example

An example of the interplay between meshes, groups, and instances can be seen here:

## JIPCAD Example (scaled open cube)

## 2022/09/03
#################################################################################

surface R color (1 0 0) endsurface     # Red
surface O color (0.9 0.6 0) endsurface # Orange
surface Y color (1 1 0) endsurface     # Yellow
surface L color (0.6 0.8 0) endsurface # Lime
surface G color (0 0.9 0) endsurface   # Green
surface A color (0 0.9 0.7) endsurface # Aqua
surface C color (0 1 1) endsurface     # Cyan
surface U color (0 0.5 1) endsurface   # Uniform
surface B color (0 0 1) endsurface     # Blue
surface P color (0.6 0 1) endsurface   # Purple
surface M color (1 0 1) endsurface     # Magenta
surface Z color (1 0 0.5) endsurface   # Zinnober

###################################################

bank par
  set xscale   0.3  0.1  0.6  0.02
  set yscale   0.3  0.1  0.6  0.02
  list ( xscale yscale )
endbank

point p1 ( 1  1  1) endpoint
point p2 (-1  1  1) endpoint
point p3 (-1 -1  1) endpoint
point p4 ( 1 -1  1) endpoint

mesh quad
    face fz (p1 p2 p3 p4) endface
endmesh

group open_cube
    instance q0 quad  surface Y      endinstance
    instance q1 quad  surface O  rotate (1 0 0) ( 90) endinstance
    instance q2 quad  surface R  rotate (1 0 0) (180) endinstance
    instance q3 quad  surface M  rotate (1 0 0) (-90) endinstance
endgroup

## Instances at the "top" level will be rendered:
instance ioc1  open_cube  scale ( {expr $par.xscale} {expr $par.yscale} 0.3 )     endinstance
instance ioc2  open_cube  scale ( 0.4                {expr $par.yscale} 0.3 )  translate( 1 0 0 )   endinstance

######################   end   ######################

Here's an image of the rendered file:

Further example files can be found here. Looking through example files is a highly effective way of learning the language.