Comment by YuechenLi
3 hours ago
Hmmm. Have you tested the hard case, surface/surface intersections between cylinders yet?
For your application in IFC, the architecture difference between OpenCascade and SMLib doesn't matter as much, but a geometric modeling kernel for mechanical CAD has much stricter requirements in terms of geometric correctness, which is the reason that Rhino, despite being BRep and widely used in architecture, isn't used very much in mechanical CAD at all.
I agree, and I haven't tested more. Fully agree on the differences with true mcad and most implementations for IFC viewing aren't even BRep based, but mesh / polyhedral.
Does Moment of Inspiration have that same lack of suitability? (I've long meant to try it)
MoL seems to be more of a Rhino alternative than it is a mCAD application, so, yes, the architecture that makes it good for freeform surface modeling is what makes it less good for mechanical engineering applications.