WIRE(1)

✨ WIRE(1) — the BRL-CAD wire/fuel-line maker ✨

ok so this is wire, straight out of the BRL-CAD fam (that's the manual, bestie — welcome to WIRE(1)) 🫶

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🎀 NAME 🎀

wire — literally makes you a BRL-CAD database full of wires or fuel lines. that's it, that's the job 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

wire

that's the whole thing. no flags. no args. just vibes ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

okay so wire creates a BRL-CAD geometry database (.g file, you know the one) that describes a whole run of solid wires or fuel lines. and listen — it runs strictly interactively. like, no command-line options, no arguments, nothing. if you supply any argument at all it just prints a usage message and dips. periodt 💀

so what does it actually prompt you for? buckle up:

• the output database name — default is wire.g if you just leave it blank, king behavior 👑
• the number of wire segments — valid range is 1 to 100
• the coordinates of the start and end points, plus the radius at each point of every segment

and here's the cute part: each segment gets built as a truncated general cone (that's the tgc primitive, iykyk) so the radius can taper from one end to the other 😌✨ and adjacent segments get joined with spheres to round off the joints. the resulting solids get collected into regions and unioned into a group named wires.

heads up bestie: all values are interpreted in millimeters. every single one. don't come crying to me when your hose is tiny 🌈

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💖 EXAMPLES 💖

Example 1. Build a three-segment wire and raytrace it

wire <<EOF
hose.g
3
0 0 0
.25
0 5 -3
.25
0 10 -3
.25
0 12 -2
.25
EOF

rt -o hose.png hose.g wires

so basically feeding the interactive prompts from a here-document creates hose.g containing a three-segment wire of constant 0.25 mm radius whose segments are joined by spheres — then it renders the resulting wires group to an image with rt(1). iconic honestly 🔥

and the lil detail you gotta remember: only the first segment requires a starting point — each later segment just continues from the previous endpoint. the way that saves you so much typing 😭🫶

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⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

go hang out with the rest of the crew:

brlcad(1), mged(1), rt(1), bolt(1), gastank(1), handle(1), window(1), window_frame(1)

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💜 AUTHOR 💜

the BRL-CAD Team — legends, no cap 👑

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🍓 COPYRIGHT 🍓

This software is Copyright (c) 1989-2026 by the United States Government as represented by U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

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🧚 BUG REPORTS 🧚

found a bug? a problem? something lowkey cursed? 📧 send it via electronic mail to devs@brlcad.org — they wanna hear it fr fr 🙈

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okay bye bestie, go make some wires 💅✨

that was WIRE(1) from BRL-CAD — mwah, see you in the next manpage 🎀🦋