OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller

Posted by b-man 4 days ago

OpenSCAD the Programmers Solid 3D CAD Modeller(openscad.org)

76 points | 68 commentspage 2

stateoff 3 hours ago|

I tried OpenSCAD but it ends up being too abstract and hard to maintain for me and like others it does not solve fillets/procedural selection well.

So here is my shameless plug "sograph": https://imgur.com/a/u1n2Grg

I should consider a Show HN instead, but it is too early to release yet.

WillAdams 1 hour ago|

A similar tool which directly makes OpenSCAD code is:

https://github.com/derkork/openscad-graph-editor

(though you'd want to import BOSL2 to do fillets and so forth)

tylermarques 4 hours ago||

I've been using Opus 5.5 to write openscad models for me for the past week, with great success. I wanted to expand the project Open Source Watch Winder [0] to have 8 watches, with gears instead of pulleys, and in little back and forth I have a version I've started printing. [1]

[0] https://github.com/mwood77/osww [1] https://imgur.com/a/bWent0K

dvh 4 hours ago||

I use openscad for all my kicad 3d models via scad->off->obj->(manually edit in mm3d to add colors)->wrl->kicad

It's not as bad as it looks, it's all automatic except adding colors which takes about 2 minutes.

RobotToaster 4 hours ago||

Note that the current release version is very old, I strongly recommend downloading the nightly version and turning on the manifold geometry solver in settings as it's much faster.

bee_rider 4 hours ago||

How does OpenSCAD type stuff play with simulation, in general. (If at all?)

I’m thinking of something like finite element analysis… but, I guess since the shapes in OpenSCAD are defined through this constructive geometry system, can things be better/more mathematically defined general purpose “discretize the PDEs over my mesh” type solutions?

dranudin 3 hours ago|

Normal finite elemts does not care. The mesh ist just put on your 3d body that can be an stl or a step or whatever. The FEM only knows the nodes and nothing else. The mesh geometry is completely separate from the CAD file.

Now there is a method called Isogeometric Analysis (IGA) that was meant to improve this. It uses NURBS functions (just like CAD) for the shape functions of traditional FEM. The idea was that now, if you have NURBS describing the CAD geometry you can skip meshing and just directly calculate on the real geometry. But it did not catch on. The reason being basically, as far as I remember, was that most CAD geometries of interest are not pure NURBS. But they are operations of NURBS (think cube minus some other cube - trimmed surfaces). And IGA has problems with that.

This is a problem that openSCAD will probably also not be able to overcome. Maybe at times it might be easier to create NURBS geometries without trimmed surfaces. But most probably that cannot be done in most cases of real world significance.

bee_rider 2 hours ago||

Ah, that makes sense. I think Isogeometric Analysis was the idea I was circling (the though process being “of course you can always export to a mesh, but the OpenSCAD model seems to encode more designer intent so why not use that for simulations directly”). I’ll have to read up on what was tried and why it didn’t catch on. Thanks!

matthova 5 hours ago||

I love OpenSCAD. Have been a power user for years. It's so great asking LLMs to make 3d models in openscad.

I made a rust-implementation of openscad called openrscad (https://openrscad.com). It still has some rough edges, but runs quite fast both on desktop and in the browser

don-bright 2 hours ago||

Does it have rust versions of the full stack of libraries like Agnis Johnson's Clipper, etc? How compatible is the kernel with CGAL Rational?

cm2187 2 hours ago||

Seconded. OpenSCAD is a bit tedious to use from scratch but claude is pretty decent at generating the code. It can't render the script though so it tends to make silly mistakes

joewalnes 5 hours ago||

Wrote a tutorial:

https://github.com/joewalnes/toybrick

LLMs are excellent at building OpenSCAD models. The tutorial (written in the before-times) will help understanding of the key concepts of OpenSCAD: primitives, transformations, and constructive solid geometry.

kennywinker 4 hours ago||

If you want openscad without the abomination that is the openscad language - check out jscad

aeonik 4 hours ago||

BOSL2 library combined with LLMs really make me fly with my creations.

moebrowne 1 hour ago|

https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2

TacticalCoder 5 hours ago|

OpenSCAD is amazing for those who know nothing about 3D but know about programming.

I bought a 3D printer (which is basically simpler and more reliable than a 2D inkjet printer by now: it's send the file, put the filament, and 3D print and it just works) recently and already fixed shitload of stuff around the house with 3D printed parts.

I even did "print in place" pieces where you add a pause a a certain layer, insert "stuff" (like say a 3D metal angle) into your print, then finish your print. Effectively creating parts that are both plastic and metal.

Now the language itself in OpenSCAD is kinda really bad: you can define variables inside of other functions and then use them everywhere. You can redefine already defined variables and you'll get zero warning. The language itself is really pretty WTF.

But you get modelling for free as a programmer. And LLMs are okay'ish at it for simple stuff.

I'd recommend people to use the BOSL2 library for OpenSCAD:

https://github.com/BelfrySCAD/BOSL2/wiki

It's really not hard.

If you love programming and like to DIY stuff around the house, buying a 3D printer and learning some OpenSCAD is a no-brainer.

OpenSCAD ain't the only option: many people like Fusion (for example). But as I'm a dev, OpenSCAD just feels natural to me.

kens 5 hours ago|

As a programmer, I second this. Systems like Blender are inscrutable to me, but in OpenSCAD I just write some loops. I get what I want and it's easy to tweak.

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