Organizing your OpenSCAD code: Part I(blog.cubehero.com)

blog.cubehero.com

http://blog.cubehero.com/2013/12/18/organizing-your-openscad-code-part-i/

15 comments

I saw OpenSCAD mentioned in another HN comment, and thought it looked interesting. I was wondering though:

How does OpenSCAD compare to other free CAD programs like FreeCAD? Is it just that it's more focused on programming?

Jtsummers13년 전

The primary difference: You don't drag stuff around to create your models. You write code for it. Now, you can import existing models for a variety of formats, then move them around (with transforms, still in code). It's more like POV-Ray, for instance, than Blender.

dlau113년 전

Also interested in this as someone who is looking to make some 3d printed prototypes just as a hobbyist (i.e. I have an idea and a drawing on paper and I just want to draw it up in a CAD program)

dgrnbrg13년 전

If OpenSCAD isn't powerful enough for you, there's a Clojure wrapper that lets you leverage Clojure to generate SCAD code: https://github.com/farrellm/scad-clj. OpenSCAD automatically re-renders the model when the file changes on disk, so you can essentially have a 3D modeling REPL with this setup.

Jtsummers13년 전

> OpenSCAD automatically re-renders the model when the file changes on disk, so you can essentially have a 3D modeling REPL with this setup.

I love this feature of OpenSCAD. I've tried 3d modeling tools in the past, they just don't work for me. But code, I can do that. With a Mac Mini hooked up to my TV (primarily for watching videos, listening to music) I ssh into it and edit the files with emacs, and every save I get an updated view. I need to take a look at this clojure wrapper, however. I'm not hugely familiar with clojure, but CL and scheme I've got so it shouldn't take me long.

iamwil13년 전

OP here. Lemme know if there's other topics on OpenSCAD that you'd like to see and read about.

alok-g13년 전

It it possible to create animations also with OpenSCAD?

iamwil13년 전

It is, though it's usually not used for figure animation, but more mechanical animations.

bliker13년 전

This is exactly I would be interested in! Do you also have any tips for 2D drafting in harmony with openscad?

iamwil13년 전

You'd have to be more specific. What does "2D drafting in harmony with openscad" mean?

jglauche13년 전

I made a framework to write OpenSCAD code in Ruby. Helps a lot to keep yourself sane on big projects: https://github.com/Joaz/CrystalScad

krasin13년 전

There's also a similar project for Python [1].

That said, do I understand correctly that the way you assume the users will share their OpenSCAD models is to share the generated OpenSCAD scripts?

[1] https://github.com/SolidCode/SolidPython

jglauche13년 전

My work is heavily inspired by SolidPython. SolidPython, unfortunately has some shortcomings at the syntax (resulting in too many braces to read properly).

I do hope that the people will share the ruby code and not the generated openscad code, as that would be hardly readable.

[deleted]13년 전

bmslieght13년 전

I not (yet) got ruby installed. Have you an example how https://github.com/Joaz/bulldozer/tree/master Builds in openSCAD format or .stl or even a jpg ?

Thanks, Brendan