Make ball_bearing_info function similar to screw_info (ball_bearing_info returns struct)

[llewellyn-marriott]

Hello everyone,

I am fairly new to OpenSCAD and BOSL2 so please be kind if there are mistakes here or I am misunderstanding something. I also want to say thanks for this amazing tool.

My feature request is to make ball_bearing_info function more like screw_info in that it would return a struct which could be passed to ball_bearing.

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.
I am using a ball bearing that doesn't have a supported trade size, I had hoped I would be able to use the ball_bearing_info function to construct the array using my custom dimensions, then pass that around to modules. But ball_bearing_info only accepts trade sizes. So I must construct the array with values in the correct order.
It is possible, but I thought with a small change here it would be much easier.

Describe the solution you'd like
I like how the screw_info function returns a struct that can be used with all the related screw functions.
I would like to see the same for ball_bearing_info and ball_bearing.

Describe alternatives you've considered
Currently I am using a wrapper of ball_bearing and ball_bearing_info to achieve the above.

Example Code
This is the wrapper I am using

module ball_bearing_from_info(ball_bearing_info) {
    if(is_struct(ball_bearing_info)) {
        ball_bearing(
            id=struct_val(ball_bearing_info,"shaft_diam"),
            od=struct_val(ball_bearing_info,"outer_diam"),
            width=struct_val(ball_bearing_info,"width"),
            shield=struct_val(ball_bearing_info,"shielded"),
            flange=struct_val(ball_bearing_info,"flanged"),
            fd=struct_val(ball_bearing_info,"flange_diam"),
            fw=struct_val(ball_bearing_info,"flange_width"),
        );
    } else {
        ball_bearing(ball_bearing_info);
    }
    children();
}

function ball_bearing_info_struct(trade_size, id, od, width, shield = true, flange = false, fd, fw, rounding) =
  is_def(trade_size) && is_string(trade_size) ?
  let(
    info = ball_bearing_info(trade_size)
  ) struct_set(
    [],
    [
      "shaft_diam",
      info[0],
      "outer_diam",
      info[1],
      "width",
      info[2],
      "shielded",
      info[3],
      "flanged",
      info[4],
      "flange_diam",
      info[5],
      "flange_width",
      info[6],
    ]
  ) :
  struct_set(
    [],
    [
      "shaft_diam",
      id,
      "outer_diam",
      od,
      "width",
      width,
      "shielded",
      shield,
      "flanged",
      flange,
      "flange_diam",
      fd,
      "flange_width",
      fw,
    ]
  ) ;

my_custom_ball_bearing = ball_bearing_info_struct(id=17, od=35, width=14, shield=true, flange=false);
my_standard_bb = ball_bearing_info_struct("6003");

echo_struct(my_custom_ball_bearing);
echo_struct(my_standard_bb);

// render from ball bearing info
ball_bearing_from_info(my_custom_ball_bearing);
// render ball bearing from trade size
ball_bearing_from_info("6003");

How it would work from source modification:

To implement this I would modify the ball_bearing module to check if trade_size is a struct, if it is then read values from the struct. This part shouldn't be a breaking change.

However if ball_bearing_info was changed to return a struct that could break some existing workflows.
An additional paramter could be added called as_struct defaulted to false which will return a struct when set to true.

my_custom_ball_bearing = ball_bearing_info(id=17, od=35, width=14, shield=true, flange=false, as_struct=true);
ball_bearing(my_custom_ball_bearing);

Additional context
Add any other context or screenshots about the feature request here.