As someone who's dabbled a little bit with OpenSCAD, SolidWorks, etc:
> Because it unlocks the ability to reason about the shapes you're creating, within the code that creates them. You can for example place a feature in the centre of a face of an object you just created, without having to recalculate the ___location of the centre of the face or the normal etc.
I can definitely see the appeal of this; would it be possible to refit such capability back into OpenSCAD's model (even if it meant breaking some backwards compatibility)? Like, you're not just executing imperative "drawing" operations, but the models you've created become available as first-class objects to be further referenced & poked at?
> I can definitely see the appeal of this; would it be possible to refit such capability back into OpenSCAD's model
This is where my understanding gets weak, but I think the answer in a practical sense is no. Not with the way that kernel works. It could be somewhat modelled on top, but then you have a layer around the kernel doing essentially the whole task of a bRep kernel.
> Because it unlocks the ability to reason about the shapes you're creating, within the code that creates them. You can for example place a feature in the centre of a face of an object you just created, without having to recalculate the ___location of the centre of the face or the normal etc.
I can definitely see the appeal of this; would it be possible to refit such capability back into OpenSCAD's model (even if it meant breaking some backwards compatibility)? Like, you're not just executing imperative "drawing" operations, but the models you've created become available as first-class objects to be further referenced & poked at?