[OpenSCAD] feature request: resize

[Giles Bathgate]

On 10 August 2011 04:00, Don Bright <hugh.m.bright at gmail.com> wrote:
> I guess there could be a 'hack', like if you popped out of 'preview'
> mode the first time someone called 'resize', did all the 'render' of
> CSG operations, then cached the result for future 'previews'. But that
> doesnt feel right.

This is what I was going to suggest, minkowski sums are actually done
this way since there is no OpenCSG implementation for them, it renders
using CGAL, and converts the result into a primitive to be used by
OpenCSG.

"It dosen't feel right", but I think this will be quite optimal for
STL imports (which use CGAL anyway IIRC)

so for example

resize([10,1,5]) import_stl("foo.stl");

Will be about the same speed as having the parameters as part of the
import function. What will be slow is

resize([10,1,5]) mycomplexpart();

But only the first time, since all subsequent renderings would be cached.

(Marius, could you add a comment about this, I think I have only
skimmed over the technical details a bit.)

Regards

Giles