Parametric KCL exports

[adamchalmers]

Our customers might have a parametric KCL design -- e.g. a fn wheel(diameter, thickness, numBolts). What specific parameters should they use?

This is usually answered by analysis software. Right now, the engineers would have to:

1. Instantiate a specific wheel like myWheel = wheel(2.1cm, 13mm, 4)
2. Export it as wheel.step
3. Import that into their analysis software
4. Record its measurement
5. Loop back to step 1, tweaking the measurements
6. Repeat until the value in (4) is good enough

This could be automated. Imagine if you could just do:

1. Load a KCL file with a parametric function like zoo kcl export file.kcl --parametric --function=wheel diameter=2mm thickness=3mm numBolts=4
2. That opens file.kcl, calls the wheel function with the given parameters and exports it

Then it becomes very simple to write a shell script which makes some starting parameters, repeatedly calls zoo kcl command above with the current parameters, passes the exported file to the analysis software (called via CLI), measures the results, and then tweaks the parameters.