pyPolyCSG © James Gregson 2012
[email protected]

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OVERVIEW =============================================
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A C++ wrapper (+ Boost::Python-based extension module) for the Carve Constructive Solid Geometry (CSG) library, intended to simplify performing CSG operations on meshes.  Reads and writes a variety of mesh formats.

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LICENSE ==============================================
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pyPolyCSG code is licensed under the permissive MIT license, however commercial users should be aware that the Carve library upon which pyPolyCSG depends is licensed under the GPL v2.  Commercial users are advised to contact the Carve authors to negotiate custom license terms.

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UPDATES ==============================================
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September 8, 2013 
- Major revisions to the build system. Moved from distutils for building the library to CMake. Changed default Carve installation procedure.
- Preliminary CGAL support, currently in alpha.  Build system will first attempt to use a system Carve installation, must be 'findable' via the CMake find_package function.  If no Carve installation is found, build system will then try to use system CGAL installation.  Failing that the build system will look in the third_party/ subdirectory for a Carve installation.  Disable use of CGAL entirely by passing -DCSG_NO_CGAL=True to CMake when building the library.

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INSTALLATION =========================================
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PyPolyCSG depends on the Carve or CGAL libraries to perform boolean operation on polyhedra. CGAL tends to be more robust, while Carve is significantly faster.  Generally Carve is preferred.  To obtain and build the Carve run the following commands from the third_party subdirectory.  Note that building Carve requires the CMake build system to be installed.  The Boost library must also be installed.

To build carve, run the following commands from the pyPolyCSG directory.

cd third_party
hg clone https://code.google.com/p/carve
cd carve
cmake ../carve -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
make

This should start building a release version of the Carve library. If successful, this will produce a set of files in the carve directory that are referenced by the PyPolyCSG build scripts along with the files in the carve directory. You can optionally install carve for use in other programs by running the command:

make install

from the carve directory as well. 

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Python pyPolyCSG extension module:

Run the following commands to create a build directory and build the library:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake .. -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release [-DCSG_NO_CGAL]
make

Include the term in square brackets to disable use of CGAL, otherwise leave it out.  This should place a pyPolyCSG library (e.g. libpyPolyCSG.dylib, libpyPolyCSG.so or libpyPolyCSG.lib) file in the top level directory.  You can then create the python extension module by running the following command. 

python setup.py install

to install the extension module.  This may need to be run as root. Examples demonstrating the library can then be run from the scripts/ subdirectory.