In TeX it it possible to measure a box, and based on that measurement place things. Being able to measure an object would allow one to for example place a hole relative to the object --- cadquery allows that sort of thing for instance. I've been trying to do coopered boxes, and it would have been nice to measure a slat after cutting off the edges at an angle rather than having to do the trigonometry to determine how wide the slats were. William -----Original Message----- From: Jordan Brown <openscad@jordan.maileater.net> To: OpenSCAD general discussion <discuss@lists.openscad.org>; fergald@gmail.com <fergald@gmail.com> Sent: Sun, Jun 21, 2020 12:28 pm Subject: Re: [OpenSCAD] exporting information from a module? On 6/20/2020 11:25 PM, fergald@gmail.com wrote: Well not exactly, since you can't query the built-in ones either because you cannot refer to them. Missing piece #1 is the ability to refer to a constructed object, not just immediately add it to the tree. Then ideally you would be able to query any of it's input parameters any of the calculated parameters it chooses to expose and some standard parameters like origin and orientation. Could you give an example of how it would be useful to query the origin or orientation of an object? I'm not even understanding what it would mean. _______________________________________________ OpenSCAD mailing list Discuss@lists.openscad.org http://lists.openscad.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss_lists.openscad.org

On 6/21/2020 3:44 PM, William F. Adams via Discuss wrote: >> On 6/20/2020 11:25 PM, fergald@gmail.com <mailto:fergald@gmail.com> >> wrote: >>> Well not exactly, since you can't query the built-in ones either >>> because you cannot refer to them. Missing piece #1 is the ability to >>> refer to a constructed object, not just immediately add it to the >>> tree. Then ideally you would be able to query any of it's input >>> parameters any of the calculated parameters it chooses to expose and >>> some standard parameters like origin and orientation. >> Could you give an example of how it would be useful to query the >> origin or orientation of an object? >> >> I'm not even understanding what it would mean. > In TeX it it possible to measure a box, and based on that measurement > place things. > > Being able to measure an object would allow one to for example place a > hole relative to the object --- cadquery allows that sort of thing for > instance. > > I've been trying to do coopered boxes, and it would have been nice to > measure a slat after cutting off the edges at an angle rather than > having to do the trigonometry to determine how wide the slats were. Extracting various dimensions (e.g. bounding boxes) I understand. But I don't understand extracting orientation and origin.