Fighting with computers

After using Onshape CAD software for a while I am really fond of it. So one natural thing to do, specially once they have released the Instructor's kit is to start using it in the classroom too. But one thing I was not so sure how to do was to use old designs I made using OpenSCAD. It does not mean I am completely quitting using OpenSCAD but suddenly I can see I can do assemblies in Onshape that will look quite nice for showing and documentation purposes if only I could easily import from OpenSCAD. I am glad to report that the route OpenSCAD --> FreeCAD --> Onshape worked brilliantly. Even more when a few tricks were applied. While some people suggest to import CSG files from OpenSCAD to FreeCAD, I have had more success by directly importing SCAD files into FreeCAD. One trick that worked well for me was to get rid of $fn references, so now circles become real circles (or cylinders) in FreeCAD. If a part keeps some $fn references then your cylinders or circles wi...

A while ago I created a tool that would send the marked exams to my students by email. I used adhesive stickers with a QR barcode they put in the first exam page once they are done. The system kind of works and even some colleagues have started using it too. The problem is that once we have the pile of marked exams scanned as a single PDF file, barcodes need to be read reliably. It is not that the scanned images are bad. I usually scanned it at 200dpi grayscale. The problem is that even if I set the black to the strongest setting is not good enough for ZXing library to decode it properly. And of course if the code is not decoded properly all the system goes under. For a while I have been cranking up the black color using Imagemagick command line tool and when that was not good enough I realized that blurring the document would also helped. While I get that working, the exam itself became not so nice to read after that. Anyway, after a bit more of testing I realized that ...