First Design

[DarthCrucias]

ok, so this is my first attempt at rendering something in a cad program in probably 10 years. i'd love some feedback. it is also my first attempt with this program. if i did not post everything needed, please let me know, and i will be happy to amend my post.

i was trying to create a submarine from a game that i like to play. i will post a pic of the sub from my phone after i post this from my computer. i am using openscad to make it (yeah, probably a bit ambitious for a first try)light sub.stllight sub.scad

i have included the rendering and the save file. i realize that the code is likely very sloppy. any suggestions on how to improve would be greatly appreciated

edit included the pic from the game

edit remembered another question: is there any way to smooth the surface out? i dont like the straight edges

[curious aardvark]

well it could do with some annotation. Also you could print the periscope seperately and just slot it into the top of the sub. That way you'd only need supports on the tail fins.
But - very nice sub.

And the fact that you've jumped in with liner extrude and polygons - neither of which I've yet to go near. Is very impressive :-)
I use hull intead of polygons. As it makes more sense to me.
And have yet to do anything with linear extrude.

Looks like openscad suits you too :-)

stick this at the top of your code and fress f5 :-)
$fn=100;

and it will look like this:


It sets facets to 100. Makes round things smoother.

Now that sub will need supports on the periscope and side fins to print. And I'd probably shave a small section off the base to give it a flat point to start the print. But nice job :-)

One of the things about openscad is that everyone can do it their way.

But trust me, you need to annotate the designs, otherwise when you come back to it, it'll just be so much gibberish.

I do a lot of copy and pasting - because it's quicker than messing around with repitition loops. But it can get confusing quite quickly.
Also I tend to add a comment after a curly bracket '}' to indicate which part of the process it's enclosing. When you get a half dozen or so at the end of a script it can be somewhat tricky to work out which one is for what.