[HN Gopher] OpenSCAD: The Programmer's Solid 3D CAD Modeller
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       OpenSCAD: The Programmer's Solid 3D CAD Modeller
        
       Author : LorenDB
       Score  : 30 points
       Date   : 2024-09-14 22:02 UTC (57 minutes ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (openscad.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (openscad.org)
        
       | zimpenfish wrote:
       | I've made a bunch of stuff in OpenSCAD and it can be really nice
       | to work with but... it does have a bunch of weirdnesses like not
       | being to find the size of a compound object, having to micro-
       | manage your objects to avoid the spinning beach ball render,
       | fillets/chamfers/rounded edges/etc. are dark arts, etc.
       | 
       | If you're basically sticking simple shapes together or cutting
       | simple shapes out of other shapes, it's fine enough.
        
         | arghwhat wrote:
         | Yeah, it has its charms but... Good luck making a filet or a
         | chamfer between two faces whose intersection has a non-trivial
         | placement.
         | 
         | Being able to easily reference existing edges and faces for
         | future operations is one of the things that make other CAD so
         | simple.
        
       | timschmidt wrote:
       | Don't miss the https://github.com/nophead/NopSCADlib library for
       | OpenSCAD, which includes a tremendous amount of useful shapes,
       | functions, and the ability to produce exploded diagrams, assembly
       | instructions, etc.
        
         | spiritplumber wrote:
         | thank you!
        
       | janice1999 wrote:
       | Wow, looks like the project might still be alive. Hopefully we
       | get a new release year.
        
         | ta988 wrote:
         | it is still alive yes the repo is active.
        
       | h2odragon wrote:
       | the "manifold" renderer makes possible some stunts that couldn't
       | be done before. for example, i made this "usa counties" outline
       | from a _png_ : https://www.printables.com/model/895723-usa-
       | counties
       | 
       | its under the "features" preference, doesn't work for everything
       | yet, but is worth investigating if you haven't.
        
       | randomghost1 wrote:
       | What are people's thoughts on CAD generation with LLMs for
       | OpenSCAD and other proprietary GUI-based softwares? I imagine
       | soon we will also be able to "autocomplete" or "semantically
       | edit" feature trees in SolidWorks, Fusion, etc.
        
         | stavros wrote:
         | I made some simple stuff using Claude with OpenSCAD, it was
         | eminently decent. LLMs really have made the start of all
         | learning curves flat.
        
       | pbronez wrote:
       | OpenSCAD has been great for simple projects. It's very easy to
       | get productive with if you know basic programming concepts.
       | However, I've run into frustrating limitations on more complex
       | projects. The core geometry engine is skittish.
       | 
       | I still use OpenSCAD, but I'm diving into the OCCT ecosystem. It
       | has a steeper learning curve, but seems to be significantly more
       | robust.
       | 
       | https://dev.opencascade.org/
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2024-09-14 23:00 UTC)