First attempts in openSCAD

[fred_dot_u]

Now we're talking Fractals!

[curious aardvark]

fractally sidetracked - I need to get that on a t-shirt !

'I know you asked me something, but I've been fractally side tracked !'

[curious aardvark]

The thing about openscad is that at first it looks complicated.

But as long as you break it down into basic shapes. Moving them about and adding and taking them away from each other.
It's actually really easy.

Also do not worry about WHY the brackets are where they are. Just type them and carry on.

Even after 8 years if using this I still look at the cheat sheet every single time I do a 'for' loop: for (i = [start:end])
I just can't seem to remember that exact sequence.

And I still haven't got my head around calling other scripts within another script.

I've used font libraries and thread libraries. But only by copying :-)

I'm just glad there are people out there who do understand the manual and can translate it from 'programmer' back into 'human' for people like me.

I'm fairly sure that a lot of programmers are somewhere along the aspergers index. maybe not enough that anyone's ever noticed, but just enough to change the way their brain works, sufficiently to seperate it from how mine works.

Asbergers does seem to often increase and enhance the mathematical side of the brain.
I mean it does a lot of stuff - but I'd put money that a lot of programmers are on the mathematical side of the condition.

[printbus]

The thing about openscad is that at first it looks complicated.

But as long as you break it down into basic shapes. Moving them about and adding and taking them away from each other.
It's actually really easy.

Yeah, I know that when I realized that, openSCAD became a lot easier to understand and more "fun" to work with.

On a minor point, working with openSCAD isn't really programming. It is a scripting language that happens to follow some of the syntax of the C programming language. That's the extent of the programming connection. Having done some programming (albeit mostly at a hobby level), every now and then I run into things I could easily do in C but can't in openSCAD. For example, there are no true variables in openSCAD - only fixed constants.

[fred_dot_u]

@printbus, I like to use the term assignment as a description in place of variable, to reduce the confusion new users might experience. Of course, the syntax appears to be the same, but as you suggested, it's a constant once it's assigned.

[jamcultur]

OpenSCAD is a declarative language, which can be confusing for people used to imperative languages like C++, Javascript, and Python. That means that there are no true variables or loops. What looks like variables aren't variable, and what looks like loops are unrolled by OpenSCAD. One good thing about OpenSCAD is that there is a huge amount of example code on the internet. Another good thing is that it is a pretty limited language; there isn't that much to learn compared to other languages.

[curious aardvark]

From a non-programmers point of view - the variables and loops do what I want them to do and are fairly easy to understand :-)

My programming days pretty much started and stopped with BASIC.
and that was 30-40 years ago.
I was pretty good on the zx81, wrote a couple of my own games.
I did have a compiler to put them into machine code. Otherwise they would have too slow to use.

But that was a LONG time ago, I had a lot more brain cells back then ;-)

[terrypin]

I agree that screenshot resolution is very poor

That's down to this site. It must be resizing the original 1914 x 1175 JPG. The text is all readable on my PC.

The discussion has moved on since then, but if anyone still wants it here is a direct link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5lmp9ewkok...tUse.jpg?raw=1

[curious aardvark]

it's a parrot spammer.

They just make comments. Don't try to sell anything.

I'm about 90% certain they are used by the forum owners - and I have no clue who that is - to drive up post numbers to get more advertising revenue.
Anyway that one's gone.

[terrypin]

Replying to Post #29

How is it possible to tell to whom a poster is replying, unless by quoting, or stating it explicitly or otherwise making it obvious as I've done here?

Specifically, I'm curious to know what is 'it' in this sentence please; "it's a parrot spammer." ?