Infrastructure for solid modeling.

(formerly known as mkeeter/ao)

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libfive is a framework for solid modeling using functional representations.

It includes several layers, ranging from infrastructure to GUI:

• The libfive shared library contains functions to build, manipulate, and render f-reps. A great deal of work has gone into the meshing algorithm, which produces watertight, manifold, hierarchical, feature-preserving triangle meshes. The library is written in C++ and exposes a C API in libfive.h.
• libfive-guile is a Guile binding to libfive. It exposes a high-level API to construct shapes, and includes a standard library of shapes, transforms, and CSG operations.
• Studio is a GUI application in the style of OpenSCAD. It wraps libfive-guile and allows for live-coding of solid models. The interface also includes direct modeling, where the user can push and pull on the model's surface to change variables in the script.

• Tovero: A 3D modeling system for Common Lisp
• libfivepy: A Python CAD library (work in progress)
• Bindings for Unity
• Unpublished Stanza bindings (email for details)

• Inspekt3D: Lightweight pure-Guile viewer
• PyFive3D: Lightweight pure-Python viewer (work in progress)
• C5H12 (Pentane): Lightweight C viewer

(c) 2015-2018 Matthew Keeter

Different layers of this project are released under different licenses:

• The libfive dynamic library is released under the Mozilla Public License, version 2.
• libfive-guile and Studio are released under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or later.

Contact the author to discuss custom development, integration, or commercial support.

The full system (libfive + libfive-guile + Studio) has been successfully compiled on Mac and Linux.

The libfive kernel builds on MSVC, and should also build with MinGW (though this is untested).

• cmake
• pkg-config
• Eigen 3.3.x
• libpng
• Boost 1.65 or later
• Qt 5.7 or later
• Guile 2.2.1 or later

Qt and Guile are optional; if they aren't present, then the Guile bindings and Studio will not be included in the build (and cmake will print a message to that effect).

With homebrew installed, run

brew install cmake pkg-config eigen libpng qt guile boost

Then, from the libfive folder, run something like:

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/qt5/5.7.0  ..
make

(adjust based on your Qt installation, and consider using ninja for faster builds.

Ubuntu 18.04 or later should have all dependencies available through the package manager

sudo apt-get install cmake pkg-config libeigen3-dev libpng-dev libboost-all-dev qtbase5-dev guile-2.2-dev 

Ubuntu releases before 18.04 do not provide guile-2.2-dev, so omit that from the above package install command. To build guile 2.2.3 from source, run

sudo apt-get install libgmp-dev libltdl-dev libunistring-dev libgc-dev libffi-dev pkg-config
wget https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/guile/guile-2.2.3.tar.gz 
tar -xf guile-2.2.3.tar.gz
cd guile-2.2.3
./configure
make -j4
sudo make install

Ubuntu releases before 17.04 do not have high enough Qt versions, so also omit qtbase5-dev from the above package install command. To install Qt 5.7 or later, use the Qt provided Online Installer: https://www.qt.io/download The installer will prompt for the install path, which defaults to $HOME/Qt.

Building is similar as on Mac: clone the repository, then run something like

mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_PREFIX_PATH=<Qt Install Path>/5.7/gcc_64 ..
make -j4

(adjusting the Qt path to your install location)

With Visual Studio 2017 installed, run from libfive folder

git clone https://github.com/Microsoft/vcpkg.git
vcpkg\bootstrap-vcpkg.bat
vcpkg\vcpkg install eigen3:x86-windows-static boost:x86-windows-static libpng:x86-windows-static
md build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE="..\vcpkg\scripts\buildsystems\vcpkg.cmake" -DVCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET="x86-windows-static" -G "Visual Studio 15 2017" ..

Now open build\libfiv.sln and build the solution. Check that libfive-test runs correctly.