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I am wanting to build a browser-based app that allows users to manipulate drawings over a network. The drawings will be in Auto-cad format, along with a few others. I have searched Google for libraries that would simplify the process, but unfortunately I'm not sure what to look for. Does anyone have experience doing this sort of thing or something similar? If so, would you mind explaining what technologies will be needed?
Thanks in advance
Doing so over a dial-up connection would be painfully slow if your intent is real-time manipulation. I would suggest a large-bandwidth connection if the users are to interact in a satisfactory way. Either way, you will have to transmit the data. So you should compress/decompress as necessary. If you intend to diplay through existing browsers, you will have to consult the microsoft documentation for doing that sort of thing(or rather the vendor of your target browser). If you wish to build an app that will run beside the browser, that may be easier. Going that direction, you will either have to write a program that parses the bytes into a displayable format, otherwise, you can exploit existing codecs residing in libs such as libmmsystem.a where there are functions you can call to simplify the process.
To be sure, it would take one to six months minimum to have such a process up and running smoothly. Maybe less if you're productive. Let me know how it goes ;)
HA! is that you keith? if not, never mind. www.kamelsoftware.com does exactly that but just viewing, not editing. Weblook is the product name.
Sebastiani - the only thing which would be transmited across the internet is the actually paramiters the user changed. That isn't very clear, basically you could have a set of commands which would be transmited across the network i.e. "Line (123, 321) - (321, 123)" or (more likely) a set of 32 bit opp-codes with paramiters.
Excellent point VB. That is excepting the initial transfer, of course. Hmm, that would tighten things up quite well. Additionally, if that data were to be sent in binary, you would most certainly guarantee a nice transfer rate. This is starting to sound like a fun project!
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...as you were saying, of course... :pQuote:
...or (more likely) a set of 32 bit opp-codes with parameters...
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I seen someone who did an online white board type thing using the same kind of ideas. I think it would be a nice project to get round to one day!