Blake Courter hosted a Webinar on using the API in SpaceClaim. Here are notes I took from the hour-long presentation. Most watching the Webinar had little or no experience at programming. Biggest user of API is SpaceClaim itself.
Spaceclaim's API is a wrapper layer using .Net, and so you can use C++, C#, F#, Visual Basic, and other programming languages. (Mr Courter uses C#.) It is only partly documented, and so you may need to contact SpaceClaim for help. It also helps to know a CAD system, Visual Studio, understand vector math and linear algebra, and have experience at programming.
For instance, you can:
- Look for all edges 2" or longer.
- Add custom panels that implement Windows forms.
- Create new tools.
- Add custom file types to dialog boxes.
- Generate temporary graphics.
- Implement tools for custom graphics
Add-ons are forwards compatible. Each new version of SpaceClaim updates the API, but the company always includes versioning, so that old apps work with APIs -- the only CAD vendor to provide this benefit.
Everything in the APIs is done through commands, which makes it easy to undo. While many threads can read at the same time, only one can write at a time.
He showed some apps built on SpaceClaim. One is jewelry design software. Because it uses solid modeling, the designer knows how much gold is needed. It has its own library of stones and patterns (settings). One routine scales the diamond parts, depending on where they are on the surface of the ring.
You can watch a recorded video of the seminar here:
http://www.spaceclaim.com/en/Mkting/SingleVideoPlayer.aspx?v=API_Webinar_2011-12-14.mp4
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SpaceClaim continues to add as well as to fix basic core functionality. This compares very favorably to what SolidWorks does which is add new features and not fix their basic CAD tools that have been badly broken for many years.
It's too bad CAM vendors aren't pounding at SpaceClaim's door begging to OEM license SpaceClaim because SpaceClaim is the ideal host for a CAM product. SpaceClaim's API is just one more thing in a huge list of things that SpaceClaim has got right. I'm no fanboi but I love using SpaceClaim and I love their approach to development.
Jon Banquer
San Diego, CA
http://whymastercamisthewrongchoice.blogspot.com/
Posted by: Jon Banquer | Mar 20, 2012 at 11:53 AM
SpaceClaim API is definitely good and is improving with the release of every version.
A great advantage with its API versioning is that if a user buys an addin/app, he can use the same addin (without upgrading) in the coming releases of SpaceClaim. Which is not possible for any other CAD software (AFAIK).
Btw, in the webinar on SpaceClaim API by Blake Courter, apart from the jewelry design addin, he also showed a demo of SC-Motion (http://www.ar-cad.com/sc-motion/index.html), a motion and dynamic simulation addin for SpaceClaim.
Posted by: Rajeev Lochan | Mar 21, 2012 at 03:57 AM
Good article Ralph.
Needless to say this why the SpaceClaim partner program is growing quickly.
Posted by: Dave Johnson | Mar 21, 2012 at 08:26 AM