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Lets talk about: OpenSCAD

We can find the homepage here: http://www.openscad.org/

The maintainers of the website call their tool:

The Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller

But I decided to call it Parametric Design to not chase people away too early. The use of the language to describe a model is quite powerful, the Programming can be introduced later step-by-step.

Let’s declare: OpenSCAD is essentially a model description language with a 3D-rendering engine and a STL-code compiler.

The language and the 3D-rendering are demonstrated in the next part. STL-code is a data format to describe 3D-models. It is a standard format, that is used by almost all 3D-printing applications.

3D design tool chain

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Script based modelling

Almost all other 3D design applications use some proprietary binary format to save their results. OpenSCAD uses plain text. A plain text format gives us some advantages.

Text-based design benefits

  • Direct control of all parameters
  • The code can be commented
  • Code can be versioned and reviewed (GIT Version Control)
  • Easy sharing and reuse of designs (also partial)
  • exact and repeatable results

OpenSCAD Advantages

  • Its open source and its free.
  • It runs on Windows, Mac amd Linux
  • Powerful libraries (e.g. tooth-wheel)
  • Active community of developers and users
  • Many examples and tutorials online.

It simply works. You can get your first results in minutes.

Lets get to the Examples