Core Concepts

This guide will outline core concepts of the Core3D SDK.

Contents

• Model
• Design
• Resource
• Modifier

Model

A 3D model on which to build or display a Design. This entity allows you to access meshes, zones, and other properties of the underlying 3D model programmatically.

Design

An object representing the combination of a Model and lists of Resource and Modifier entities. A Design is not tied to the the specific Model entity, meaning the Model can be swapped and the Design can be reprojected.

Resource

A Resource represents a Material, Graphic, Pattern, etc. that can be applied to a Design.

There are two general types of resources:

• Assignable — represents something you'd apply directly to a mesh, which include materials, patterns, and graphics.
• Attachable — resource represents something applied to the Model as a whole, which include: debugging utilities like the ZoneResource (for visualizing zones), additional mesh components, etc.

And a handful of specific Resource types:

• GraphicResource — an image with a single motif e.g. a logo on the sleeve of a tee shirt
• PatternResource — an image repeated across the entire target (mesh) AKA all-over prints
• MaterialResource — a repeated texture representing some base surface e.g. cotton, plastic, leather, etc.
• ZoneResource — used to visualize a “printable area” defined on a model

A Resource can be reused across several components of a Design, or multiple Designs, for example:

const graphic = await core3d.loadGraphic('core3d:upload:...');

const design1 = core3d.createDesign();

design1.apply(graphic, design1.listMeshes()[0]);
design1.apply(graphic, design1.listMeshes()[1]);

const design2 = core3d.createDesign();

design2.apply(graphic, design2.listMeshes()[0]);

Modifier

An object that describes how a Resource is applied to a Design i.e. an entity representing a Resource/Design link.

There are two general types of Modifiers:

• Assignment — represents the application of an Assignable resource.
• Attachment — represents the application of an Attachable resource.

And specific Modifier types for every Resource type:

• GraphicAssignment from GraphicResource
• MaterialAssignment from MaterialResource
• PatternAssignment from PatternResource
• ZoneAttachment from ZoneResource
• ... and so on

Any time a Resource is applied to a Design, a Modifier is returned, for example:

const design = core3d.createDesign();
const graphic = await core3d.loadGraphic('core3d:upload:...');
const graphicAssignment = design.apply(graphic, design.listMeshes()[0]);

graphicAssignment.setScale(20);