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The focus of this chapter lies on conveying the essential concepts and functionality of OpenSCAD using select examples. In the course of the following sections, this difference will become more apparent. Rather, it is the specification of a geometric structure. Although the textual description reminds of classical program code, it is not a program. Especially if you have some programming experience, this apparent similarity can lead to some misunderstandings and misguided intuitions. At first glance, this description resembles a program written in a programming language such as Javascript or C. This is possibly the most important function! It allows you to remove one shape from another.As mentioned before, geometric models in OpenSCAD are described by a textual description. Then I echo (print to terminal) the variable to check it's what I think it should be. So I assign the output of the function to a variable called sin_vector, by calling it and passing a range.

module test_part()), we could check the out put with an echo: sin_vector = sine_vec_func() I use modules to make up parts of a large objects, this means once I'm happy with a final assembly I can the use the module for printing or laser cutting etc. Enclosed in curly brackets and end with a semi colon.

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*/' // Single line commented outĪ handy way to organise code, make parts and reuse code is to use modules and functions, OpenSCADs name for reusable blocks of code. It's always handy to leave a few hints as to what you were aiming to do, OpenSCAD allows commenting in the code with either '//' for one line or block commenting with '/*. You can give a cylinder two diameters to make a cone, d1 is the lower and d2 the upper. It's maybe not quite the size you want but we can sort that kind of thing out in the modules section. You can also set it lower than the default, for example: cylinder(d = 10, h = 10, $fn = 3) cylinder(d = 10, h = 10) Īgain, this preview doesn't look very smooth, we can set the number of faces on an object with $fn= inside the brackets. In this case the center of the cube is now at 0,0,0.Ī cylinder can be described with using 'r' for the radius or, 'd' for the diameter. We can center any primitive with: cube(, center = true) This would make a cuboid with X=10mm, Y= 20mm and Z=30mm. Pressing F5 will show a preview of the cube.Īlternatively you could use: cube() You can set this as high or as low as you want but be aware that calculating millions of faces will take much longer! If you place a '$fn' at the start of a project all objects after will aim for that number of faces unless specified otherwise. This preview doesn't look very smooth, we can set the number of faces on an object with '$fn=' inside the brackets.

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Note: On a mac air it needs fn+F5 to preview.

The simplest of the primitive shapes, pass it a size, either radius or diameter and press F5 to preview.

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Sizes and co-ordinates are given () and each instruction ends with a semi-colon.į5 shows a preview of your object and F6 will do a full render, I only do a full render when I'm exporting for 3D printing or laser cutting, it can take a little while based on the complexity of you object and the power of your machine.Ī full description (and useful reference for all things OpenSCAD) can be found at: OpenSCAD user manual the section on primitives is at: Primitives. If you find (or have written) others please message me and I'll add to the list. Instructables already has several guides including some some useful specifics such as: This may take a little getting used to but it means if you want an obscure feature you can just write it! Instead you describe thing programmatically and OpenSCAD interprets your code. A little different from many other packages it's not directly interactive, you can't grab a point or edge and drag it out. Like many CAD packages an easy way to start is to build your object from 3D 'primitive' shapes, e.g.

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OpenSCAD is a free opensource CAD program, it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux. If you have questions I'll try and answer them in the comments bellow. It's grown to a bit more of an introduction to OpenSCAD than I was planning so I thought I'd publish here and I hope it is of use to anyone interested in the area. This started out as a way of me putting some notes online for the kind of things I found myself regularly searching for, mainly for personal use.

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