Tentmaker headaches

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

I downloaded the free 'Tentmaker_2004-2', which is Frank Chin's Tentmaker updated/upgraded by Georg Weber and Olivier Dentan, from
http://opengdl.org/gdl-de/obj00011e.htm
and I am having lots of problems which I think may have to do with the 'use of real numbers can lead to precision problems' thing. I set the object to three sides and with just about any parameter change I make I am getting The Big Black Dot.

Has anybody fixed this, or is there any other version around that doesn't have these problems, or has anybody gone through this and knows workarounds, or knows if there is anything I just should not be doing? I am not sure if I would be able to fix it by myself.

[Anonymous]

Ignacio,
I don't have this part but,
does it use the COONS command
to make the tent shape ?
The COONS command needs
four sides.
Just a thought,
Peter Devlin

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Peter wrote:
The COONS command needs
four sides. Just a thought

It does use COONS. I actually can get 3-sided tents starting from the default parameters, which turn into black dots as soon as I change one or two corner heights. And I just went to a visible 3-sided tent, changed it to 4-sided, and I get the black dot again.
The basic script has been around since the times of 6.5, and apparently it started needing updates only in 2004 (Dentan in July, Weber in August).

[Anonymous]

Ignacio,
You are correct.
You can have a three sided COONS.
I made one last night just for a test.
I would suggest getting in touch
with Olivier Dentan.
He is a member of this forum.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

Ignacio wrote:
I downloaded the free 'Tentmaker_2004-2', which is Frank Chin's Tentmaker updated/upgraded by Georg Weber and Olivier Dentan, .. .and I am having lots of problems which I think may have to do with the 'use of real numbers can lead to precision problems' thing.
Has anybody fixed this, ...

Hi Ignacio, try this one, it should work better with 9

The famous "use of real numbers ..." is solved, i hope.
The other black point was to fix the reference point of the sides hotspots (bulge), according to the various positions,
(flip, overcross and so on) . I hope this is solved too. Please tell me, i can't check for all situations.

Of course coons has four sides, the three sides coons is a workaround, point one and four overlap,
with a small distance on z axis.

I just try to update and develop an old library part (6 or 6.5) from Frank Chin, that seems interesting for me.
Any help and comments are welcome.

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

Olivier wrote:
Hi Ignacio, try this one, it should work better with 9.

You have just made my life so much less miserable. Thank you so much, Olivier.

I have played around with parameters and everything seems to work fine. I still get an 'ERROR: XML parsing failed!!! Filename : Pset' (Chinese to me) report and a black dot after a parameter change every now and then, but I just hit Save and the object magically appears. I don't know if that's object-related, OpenGL-related, or just human-operator-related.

It is a beautiful object, and your interface makes it even more beautiful. Again, thank you very much.

[Anonymous]

If you like Olivier Dentan's object interface, you can download his library for free in french or english here : http://perso.wanadoo.fr/archilib.od/