[PythonCAD] pythoncad points

[Eric Wilhelm]

# The following was supposedly scribed by
# Art Haas
# on Tuesday 27 July 2004 10:53 am:

>> If this is associative or relational drafting, then you have a circle with
>> a center point, and a segment which uses that same point plus another
>> point. If you move the circle, the segment moves.  If you move the
>> segment, the circle moves.  (Actually, you are moving the point, which is
>> being shared between entities.)  Is this a behavior you were aiming for?

note, the above is a scenario describing what happens IF this is 
relational/associative drawing.

>No. I just tried doing some simple moves things and only the one entity
>I click on to move is moved. I made a circle, then drew a segment which
>used the center point, then when to 'Modify'->'Move'->'Horizontal'. I
>then made two mouse clicks to define the distance, then I clicked on the
>circle. It moved, and the segment did not. Doing a move operation on the
>segment left the circle in place.
>
>How are you doing the move? Are you drawing a box around the entities?

You misunderstand.  My point is that pythoncad doesn't work that way.  That's 
why I don't understand the reason for storing points in a table and 
referencing the same point from more than one entity.

I can understand storing points in a table, provided that each point is 
referenced by one and only one entity.  But, then it is just an issue of 
file-format human-readability.

See the xml file referenced in my previous message.  It loads with an error 
"Failed to add object: <Generic.segment.Segment object at 0x40c8f76c>: 
Segment p1 Point not found in Layer."

If I draw a circle, and then a segment which uses the circle's center as one 
end, saving this drawing results in a point table with two entries.  This 
implies that the entities are associated to the same point (e.g. dependent on 
each other.)

But, if I move the circle or move the segment, saving results in a point table 
with three entries.  This implies that the entities are independent.

Unless I can select the point and use it to simultaneously move the circle 
while moving just that end of the segment, the point association is 
inconsistent.

Are you are planning to support the movement of points in the future?  If so, 
the interface to selecting and moving might be tricky.

A related note, I just made a circle, and then did modify->move and selected 
only the point (this is not possible with line segments.)  Pythoncad 
duplicated and moved the point, but did not move the circle.  This also gives 
me some ugly error messages on closing.

Back to the associated points table.  If this is a disk-space efficiency 
thing, I'm afraid it is a false economy.  Let's say you draw a pattern of 360 
radial lines, each 1 degree apart with a common center point.  If the lines 
each have two point stored at ~60 characters per point, then we have 359 
points that wouldn't be stored if we used a shared point for one end of each 
line (center of the pattern.)  That's only 21k saved before compression.

There is validity to both approaches, but if you aren't making pythoncad into 
an associative program, I think associating common points is inconsistent 
with that design philosophy and capable of opening several corner cases that 
you wouldn't have if you simply treat each entity as self-contained.

I think it comes down to this:  Do the entities own the points or the points 
own the entities?  If the points own the entities and are capable of owning 
more than one entity, the interface would eventually need to support editing 
points as such and orphaning entities (giving them a new parent point.)

--Eric
-- 
"Because understanding simplicity is complicated."
                                        --Eric Raymond