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In some blog posts, and in a few emails to colleagues and customers, I have mentioned the term “architecture.” I’m not sure if most non-programmers understand the issues surrounding software architecture. But I sure do. The Linkage program is familiar to people who read my blog (all 10…
Continue readingImage of Proposed Drawing Idea I want to be able to draw links in the Linkage program that look about like this (above). But I’m not sure what type of algorithm to design to do it. My plan is to create a semicircle at each and and a…
Continue readingI have an interesting programming problem. It has to do with the overall size, or area, of a mechanism. The dimension lines are draw so that the distance between them is always the same on the screen regardless of the zoom level. This is also true for videos,…
Continue readingThe Linkage program is written in C++ using the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC). MFC provides C++ classes for things like strings, but also provides a document-view architecture. The idea behind the document-view architecture is that your document is the information that needs to be displayed and the view…
Continue readingCam and Follower I was able to get a functioning cam simulation running in JavaScript. It was a little tricky and isn’t quite perfect yet. Mostly, I had to remember how my code works with the HTML5 canvas and with the coordinate system that I use for the…
Continue readingI am writing software to simulate the operation of a cam and follower. I’ll add this to the Linkage program as soon as the details are worked out and the code is known to work right. The first type of cam I want to use is a typical…
Continue readingI updated the code for the circular progress ring (seen in the picture below). You can download a complete VS project for it here: http://www.rectorsquid.com/CircleprogressRing.zip Three Progress Rings
Continue readingNo Single Predicable Connector The image above represents a mechanism that the Linkage program cannot simulate. The simulator code only looks for predictable connector positions and there are none in this mechanism. Let me explain: The simulator will look for two links that each have a connector with…
Continue readingI have a new part built for the new Rolling Ball Sculpture. Small Ball Lifter The small lifter part is the lowest lifting arm on the mechanism. This part lifts the ball off the frame to a position where another arm can take the ball. The ball is…
Continue readingThe PriorityStackPanel class is a Panel element that I built for my Windows Store app. The idea is that the panel should adapt the content to the display based on a set of rules. The existing panels in C# and WinRT are totally useless for this task because…
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