I want to learn OpenScad! Anyone have any tips?

[Alibert]

Have a look at these tutorials (all links in the beginning): http://www.tridimake.com/2014/11/how...ldren-and.html

[crisson]

There is a book available through Amazon called "OpenScad for 3D Printing" by Al Williams. As a newbie, I am still learning everything 3d including OpenScad and Sketchup. I found Mr. Williams book to be a big help…YMMV.

[curious aardvark]

got the book. Well i say 'book' it's a very short pamphlet really.
Was it worth the couple quid I spent ?
Yeah -just, learnt a few neat things, a lot of the math was over my head. But then that doesn't matter.
There are numerous online tutorials that are probably better.

And to all you programmers complaining about the syntax - for the rest of us who aren't programmers - it's largely irrelevant. You just type the commands the way it want's them typed and it works. So what if it's different to something else ?
German is written different to english - well it would be it's a different language. Likewise openscad isn't a c-compiler. So why shouldn't it be different ?

Tried the openjscad a few times. Really don't like it. And don't need it.

And what the hell is a 'concat' command ?
And why would I need one ?

[Roxy]

I've just started having a look into this:
- The OpenJsCad documentation discusses all the OpenScad functions right along with the object oriented ones. This is good for comparison and learning purposes, if you happen to already know OpenSCad. As a Solidworks user, i'm quite impressed with what OpenJsCad can do.
- Just to check, i dumped the ridged_beams.scad program (found on this page) into the OpenJsCad home page. It took longer than expected to render, but then it has to be run through a translator first. This screen grab was the result. Obviously no problem reading that file.

...

- I've started looking into running OpenJsCad locally (offline). I've installed Node.js on my system, which is the Java interpreter that OpenJsCad uses on their site and downloaded the OpenJsCad source code. Node.js comes with a openscad-openjscad-translator built in, so if i ever do get it operational it should have the same capabilities as the online version. By the way, the preferred browser for this is Chrome. That or Firefox (my fave) are the only two capable of running the site for now. More browsers are anticipated.

I just dragged and dropped that file into the OpenJScad home page. It rendered correctly!!! I'm impressed with its Backward compatibility! It might make sense to get the Java interpreter going so I can process everything locally.

[truly_bent]

Okay. Got OpenJsCad to run locally (offline). The key was to find the right GitHub directory. You'd think there would only be one, but i somehow managed to find the wrong one first try.
1) Download zip file from here (right side of page).
2) Unzip onto your hard drive. I chose to unzip just off my root, but i'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where you put it.
3) Using Firefox or Chrome (shown below), open (ctrl 'O') and find the index.html file from the package. Double click.
4) Have fun...



Note the "file:///C:/OpenJsCad/index.html" address in the upper left corner. I dumped our ridged_beams.scad test file into it and it worked exactly as advertised.

In the course of this i did install the Java script interpreter Node.js, which turned out to be unnecessary. I may just play around with it anyway. I've always had a yen to study me some Java

(Edit: Not sure yet whether having Node.js installed is necessary or not. Someone else has to confirm the above steps to be sure)

[Roxy]

Okay. Got OpenJsCad to run locally (offline). The key was to find the right GitHub directory. You'd think there would only be one, but i somehow managed to find the wrong one first try.
1) Download zip file from here (right side of page).
2) Unzip onto your hard drive. I chose to unzip just off my root, but i'm pretty sure it doesn't matter where you put it.
3) Using Firefox or Chrome (shown below), open (ctrl 'O') and find the index.html file from the package. Double click.
4) Have fun...



Note the "file:///C:/OpenJsCad/index.html" address in the upper left corner. I dumped our ridged_beams.scad test file into it and it worked exactly as advertised.

In the course of this i did install the Java script interpreter Node.js, which turned out to be unnecessary. I may just play around with it anyway. I've always had a yen to study me some Java

THANKS FOR THE HELP! I was trying to figure out if I needed to have a Linux machine to run the local version. All of their build instructions point to it being done on Linux. But that .ZIP file is everything I needed. I just load up the Index.html file and it seems to know how to pull in all the Java stuff to do the real work!!!!

It might be a little too early to say this, but if this works as well as it appears, there may not be a reason to have OpenScad installed any more! Just playing with it in the web browser, it is so much more responsive than the rendered image in the OpenScad window!

[truly_bent]

Roxy;
Np. Do you have Node.js installed? I'm hoping for confirmation that it doesn't need to be. OpenScad still renders the .scad files quicker, i presume because the file doesn't to be translated into Java Script first. I'm running a 64 bit machine and i know that for small and rapid changes, i'd find the added delay annoying. You're right about the GUI though. It is more responsive.

This is a good solution for anyone wanting to move from a quirky port of 'C' to a proper and cleaner Oop language.
My 2 cents...

(Edit: Wait! I just realized the the right side of the screen is a text editor. That's gotta help with the speed issue.)

[Roxy]

Roxy;
Np. Do you have Node.js installed? I'm hoping for confirmation that it doesn't need to be. OpenScad still renders the .scad files quicker, i presume because the file doesn't to be translated into Java Script first. I'm running a 64 bit machine and i know that for small and rapid changes, i'd find the added delay annoying. You're right about the GUI though. It is more responsive.

This is a good solution for anyone wanting to move from a quirky port of 'C' to a proper and cleaner Oop language.
My 2 cents...

(Edit: Wait! I just realized the the right side of the screen is a text editor. That's gotta help with the speed issue.)

I installed Node.js first before I started trying to find a Windows version of the OpenJScad stuff. I suspect you need to have that but I don't know for sure. As far as speed goes, I haven't really used it yet, but OpenScad is pretty slow. It will do a best guess render pretty quickly, but to actually compile the code takes forever. I suspect this isn't going to be much worse, but once again, I don't know.

[Mjolinor]

Roxy;

(Edit: Wait! I just realized the the right side of the screen is a text editor. That's gotta help with the speed issue.)

How do you recompile after using that. At the moment I am editing with Gedit then reloading because I can't find how to recompile in the HTML.

Strangely when I tried it online it didn't draw my file correctly but it seems fine with the offline version.

[Roxy]

How do you recompile after using that. At the moment I am editing with Gedit then reloading because I can't find how to recompile in the HTML.

Strangely when I tried it online it didn't draw my file correctly but it seems fine with the offline version.

So... The documentation talks about the 'Auto Reload' button. I just checked it out. I had a file open in an external text editor and also in the OpenJScad web page. As soon as I saved a change in the text editor, the web page started crunching on the design. I think it will take a little bit of use to figure everything out.