3 ms·
I’ve been trying to use FreeCAD for a while now and keep going back to OpenSCAD because, ironically, the FreeCAD UX feels grotesque (I used Fusion before, and h
by rcarmo 4y ago
I’ve been trying to use FreeCAD for a while now and keep going back to OpenSCAD because, ironically, the FreeCAD UX feels grotesque (I used Fusion before, and have a history of 3D modeling that harks back to things like Caligari and Maya).
OpenSCAD is great for a lot of the simple electronics enclosure stuff (once you master hulls), but does need better control over 2D extrusions and sorely lacks fillets and chamfers (which are essential for proper finishing of joints and outer edges). Those have been long-standing issues that haven’t been addressed by the core project (or, as far as I know, any forks), and kind of prevent me from going all in on it (although I do use it the most, and prefer writing out the geometry to drawing it).
I have also been looking into the CAD Sketcher plug-in for Blender, which is somewhat unpolished but pretty decent for simple things, and may eventually move to that altogether—although Blender STL meshes usually need a lot of cleaning up.
- sprash 4y agoI used to like OpenSCAD for its simple approach but then I discovered SDF-based modelling with Python made possible with this neat library: [1]. This is perfect if you are a programmer that doesn't know anything about CAD-Software. 1.: https://github.com/fogleman/sdf https://github.com/fogleman/sdf
- carterschonwald 4y agoOh cool! I’ve wanted to use an sdf modeler for a while
- rcarmo 4y agoThat is a trifle CPU-intensive, though. Might work OK if you can get it to work with Jupyter, but seems slow for fast iterations and without an interactive view it's hard to model.
- sprash 4y agoAgreed. The display in Jupyter should happen via some inline WebGL-shaders which would be instant rendering. Also the "marching qubes" algorithm to render the stl is not exactly state of the art (use at least octrees or something) and needs very high resolution to achieve good results.
- jdboyd 4y agoThe biggest problem I have with OpenSCAD is that frequently what I need to output are drawings of some sort, which OpenSCAD isn't really suitable for.