Heya fella's !


As a novice programmer (VB-a- and C++) i've been aproached by my boss wondering if i could do a project.

I work (as a CAD-designer) for a small company that produces modular coldrooms (big fridges basically) and we would like to create a tool that would aid us in planning/drawing the layout of these rooms.

The rough project outline :

- A 2d whiteboard that allows the user to draw the outline of the room.
- inner clockwork translates the outline into the correct amount of wallpanels needed.
- A renderer/3d view port that allows a clear preview on how the coldroom would look like.
- Preferably stand-alone, able to run on a everyday "office-computer".

This would actually really be a good startingpoint of this project. offcourse, over time, it could be worked out more (Bill of materials - calculation of costs / price - etc)

Now i'm out thinking\looking for advice on how i could best approach this project ?
What programming language would really serve well for this cause ? Can i use some kind of a draw-engine to base this on ?

Any advice is more than welcome !


Thanks in advance,

Bert

Hmm there isn't already software out there you can buy that will do this?

We had this company over that gave us a demonstration of the software they made. Though this was just remotely what we where looking for + they where asking alot of $$ to recode and alter the program to fit our (rather simple) needs ...

Other than that, i'm not aware of any program serving this cause ..

I'd think that Java or C++ would do the job well (sorry if opinions clash), C++ gives you a tremendous amount of power and Java has about the same amount of power, but is harder to mess it up.

And I think you should change the title of this topic because you question isn't about any platform.

Consider the title changed.

If you only consider yourself a novice, I think VB would be a good choice (only because you already have experience with it)

Something with .NET~ it's mostly done for you, you would just have to edit it...


Come to think of it, there's probably something open source~ there's an open source everything nowadays...

Did you look up anything on Google?

I've been looking around on the net, sourceforge etc
But i'm afraid i haven't found anything that would serve as a good startingpoint.
Maybe it's just my failing to recognise what a good startingpoint would be in this case ?

Ok, well find a good starting point for making 2d images and illaberate on everything detail so you know exactly know what to do and how to do it. Or that's how I'd start anyway.

This post has been edited by abgorn: 5 Sep, 2008 - 12:51 PM

I've started off on this project in VB.net as gabehabe suggested, as this is a language i'm allready somewhat familiar with + it offers alot of work allready done.
I'm currently laying the fundation for the runtime design/drawing tool this program needs.

Altough i'm under the impression C++ would really have this project doing well. But i'm not yet fluid enough to make this happen on my own in C++ .

For further questions and advice i'll be directing my questions in the VB section of this forum for this project !

Thanks for the advice on this thread guys !