Getting the best out of OpenSCAD • Hacker News Board

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#11

Post by andrewxdiamond » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 12:15 AM UTC

dbcurtis wrote: post #6

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #4

When I first got into 3D printing, I used OpenSCAD for my designs. The fact that objects are described with code made me feel right at home. It made it incredibly easy to make parametric designs. But later, I did start to feel the limitations. Not having automatic fillet/chamfer was huge. And sometimes, I wanted the ability to measure the distance between two points selected visually to make sure all my math involvin…

The trick with holes is to make your negative geometry penetrate past the surface. Meeting exactly on the surface will be too glitchey otherwise with the fast floating-point approximation. Fillets and chamfers though, yeah. The lack of those drives me away. As Quinn (Blondihacks) says: "Chamfers are what separate us from the animals.", and as This Old Tony says: "When it comes to chamfers, you don't want to cut corne…

Ahhh ToT. Wonder what happened to him, it’s been almost 8 months since he’s released a video.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#12

Post by sokoloff » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 12:19 AM UTC

10000truths wrote: post #8

dbcurtis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick with holes is to make your negative geometry penetrate past the surface. Meeting exactly on the surface will be too glitchey otherwise with the fast floating-point approximation. Fillets and chamfers though, yeah. The lack of those drives me away. As Quinn (Blondihacks) says: "Chamfers are what separate us from the animals.", and as This Old Tony says: "When it comes to chamfers, you don't want to cut corne…

Chamfers can be done by extruding the chamfer shape along a wireframe of the geometry to be chamfered, then subtracting the extrusion from the original geometry. I'm not sure how I'd do fillets in OpenSCAD, though.

You can use a Minkowski sum to give yourself a fillet. I did it once. It worked but was 2x as hard as learning enough Fusion360 to do that whole part and then each design after that is 20% as hard.

I eventually got pretty good at OpenSCAD, but I’d say I now reach for OpenSCAD about 3x/year and everything else is in Fusion.

I wish I’d have switched years ago.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#13

Post by stavros » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 12:27 AM UTC

smallerfish wrote: post #2

Is there a good parametric / code based CAD that's good for (amateur) house or garden design, and which runs on linux? I've used openscad in the past for simple parts prototyping, but haven't tried it for 2d work. I always found its preview kind of awkward, so I can't see it exporting or printing particularly well. I've been learning qcad recently, which is OK, but it really wants you to make extensive use of the mou…

For closed source software, I use OnShape. I've also heard good things about FreeCAD and SolveSpace.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#14

Post by msds » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 12:31 AM UTC

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #11

dbcurtis wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The trick with holes is to make your negative geometry penetrate past the surface. Meeting exactly on the surface will be too glitchey otherwise with the fast floating-point approximation. Fillets and chamfers though, yeah. The lack of those drives me away. As Quinn (Blondihacks) says: "Chamfers are what separate us from the animals.", and as This Old Tony says: "When it comes to chamfers, you don't want to cut corne…

Ahhh ToT. Wonder what happened to him, it’s been almost 8 months since he’s released a video.

There was a death in the family, apparently, so he's focusing on family stuff since then.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#15

Post by dbcurtis » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 12:57 AM UTC

msds wrote: post #14

andrewxdiamond wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahhh ToT. Wonder what happened to him, it’s been almost 8 months since he’s released a video.

There was a death in the family, apparently, so he's focusing on family stuff since then.

I thought it was an illness. But yeah, family first.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#16

Post by dpflug » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 1:03 AM UTC

http://www.implicitcad.org/ is an interesting option if you're frustrated by OpenSCAD's limitations.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#17

Post by suyula » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 1:07 AM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #4

When I first got into 3D printing, I used OpenSCAD for my designs. The fact that objects are described with code made me feel right at home. It made it incredibly easy to make parametric designs. But later, I did start to feel the limitations. Not having automatic fillet/chamfer was huge. And sometimes, I wanted the ability to measure the distance between two points selected visually to make sure all my math involvin…

I felt the same way and ended up graduating to SolveSpace for shapes I felt were too complex for OpenSCAD. After a few hours learning the new process (create planes and then extrude them) and the shortcut keys, I now exclusively use SolveSpace and my designs have never looked better.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#18

Post by explorigin » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 1:16 AM UTC

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #4

When I first got into 3D printing, I used OpenSCAD for my designs. The fact that objects are described with code made me feel right at home. It made it incredibly easy to make parametric designs. But later, I did start to feel the limitations. Not having automatic fillet/chamfer was huge. And sometimes, I wanted the ability to measure the distance between two points selected visually to make sure all my math involvin…

https://github.com/Irev-Dev/Round-Anything is a helpful library for fillets/chamfers.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#19

Post by dymk » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:20 AM UTC

smallerfish wrote: post #2

Is there a good parametric / code based CAD that's good for (amateur) house or garden design, and which runs on linux? I've used openscad in the past for simple parts prototyping, but haven't tried it for 2d work. I always found its preview kind of awkward, so I can't see it exporting or printing particularly well. I've been learning qcad recently, which is OK, but it really wants you to make extensive use of the mou…

Yes, CadQuery: https://cadquery.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html

Think OpenSCAD but based on a proper BREP kernel, so you can express something closer to actual curved surfaces instead of just rasterized approximations.

Re: Getting the best out of OpenSCAD

#20

Post by dymk » Thu, Oct 21, 2021, 2:24 AM UTC

dpflug wrote: post #16

http://www.implicitcad.org/ is an interesting option if you're frustrated by OpenSCAD's limitations.

It seems to inherit OpenSCAD's biggest limitations, which is that curved surfaces are "rasterized". To make one without perceptible facets, you need to turn the resolution up (which then tanks performance).