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This is a totally reasonable question! I am using a throwaway to limit my HN usage, to be honest. I wish I had a better way to manage my addictive social media

This is a totally reasonable question! I am using a throwaway to limit my HN usage, to be honest. I wish I had a better way to manage my addictive social media behaviour than torching accounts after a few discussions. But I do not. I saw this thread only because it's clearly a followup to the FreeCAD discussion the other day that I have contributed to. -- People do get oddly grumpy when you criticise OpenSCAD; there is an element of the "I can do maths and refuse to believe CAD needs to be any more than this" militancy about it. I absolutely don't hate it -- OpenSCAD's mere existence is what unlocked my ability to even reason in 3D, actually. But that quasi-militant tendency is holding back a fascinating, liberating software field.

nrp 2y ago
This viewpoint resonates for me. OpenSCAD is a useful tool for hacking together 3D parts quickly, but an excellent tool for exercising the shape rotating parts of your brain.
- throwgfgfd25 2y ago
  It's also good if your aim is to visualise maths.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    There is actually a book on geometry which takes advantage of this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58059196-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58059196-make which has since become a series including: Trigonometry: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123127774-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123127774-make Calculus: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61739368-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61739368-make Currently working through a library using the new Python-enabled OpenPythonSCAD, and at the end of it, hope to work on a project which requires conic sections (which I'm still researching, so if anyone has any good resources on that I'd be glad of them).
    - throwgfgfd25 2y ago
      Yes - I haven't bought these yet but I do intend to, because I need to brush up on all three (well, I don't think I ever really learned calculus, to be honest). Joan Horvath is a superhero -- I've seen a few interviews now. I will very happily use OpenSCAD for that because it seems like a well-chosen tool for the job.
chefandy 2y ago
> People do get oddly grumpy when you criticise OpenSCAD Most of us don't realize how much our comfort with familiar concepts affects our ability to objectively evaluate them. Moving from dev to being a tech artist, I see the same exact sort of irrational biases, hang-ups and endemic misconceptions with completely different tool chains and types of complexity. When I first started using Houdini, I tried to turn every task into a Python coding problem because that's what I was comfortable with— Python is amazing in Houdini but it's definitely not the best way to accomplish most tasks.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
WillAdams 2y ago
The great thing about OpenSCAD is that it makes creating models which may be described mathematically/programmatically easy. The awful thing about OpenSCAD is that what one can create in it is strongly bounded by one's facility with and fluency in mathematics. I'm curious how the new Python-enabled (I really hope it gets added in to the program itself) will affect this.
- throwgfgfd25 2y ago
  You said this so much more succinctly than me.
- coryrc 2y ago
  The awful thing is that you can only export triangles, so you can't make any true curves. If it was capable to true circles it would do everything I have ever needed to make.
  - asveikau 2y ago
    I don't understand this. You can make triangles small enough that you can't tell the difference, and define them mathematically in terms of curves..? Isn't this how any rendering will ultimately work? The primitive is triangles.
    - WillAdams 2y ago
      Yes, but the representation as arcs allows one to defer the conversion to polylines/triangles until a later time. As an example, if doing V carving, the appearance will be smoother if the geometry is imported so as to have arcs/curves, deferring the conversion to polylines/straight line movements until the last possible moment on the machine. Arcs/Curves are also easier to work with if one needs to edit, and are more efficient in terms of representation/disk space/storage.
      - ddingus 2y ago
        All true. Great comment.
parski 2y ago
I think that sounds like a healthy approach to social ad platforms and the like.

nrp 2y ago

This viewpoint resonates for me. OpenSCAD is a useful tool for hacking together 3D parts quickly, but an excellent tool for exercising the shape rotating parts of your brain.

throwgfgfd25 2y ago
It's also good if your aim is to visualise maths.
- WillAdams 2y ago
  There is actually a book on geometry which takes advantage of this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58059196-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58059196-make which has since become a series including: Trigonometry: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123127774-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/123127774-make Calculus: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61739368-make https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/61739368-make Currently working through a library using the new Python-enabled OpenPythonSCAD, and at the end of it, hope to work on a project which requires conic sections (which I'm still researching, so if anyone has any good resources on that I'd be glad of them).
  - throwgfgfd25 2y ago
    Yes - I haven't bought these yet but I do intend to, because I need to brush up on all three (well, I don't think I ever really learned calculus, to be honest). Joan Horvath is a superhero -- I've seen a few interviews now. I will very happily use OpenSCAD for that because it seems like a well-chosen tool for the job.

chefandy 2y ago

> People do get oddly grumpy when you criticise OpenSCAD Most of us don't realize how much our comfort with familiar concepts affects our ability to objectively evaluate them. Moving from dev to being a tech artist, I see the same exact sort of irrational biases, hang-ups and endemic misconceptions with completely different tool chains and types of complexity. When I first started using Houdini, I tried to turn every task into a Python coding problem because that's what I was comfortable with— Python is amazing in Houdini but it's definitely not the best way to accomplish most tasks.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

WillAdams 2y ago

The great thing about OpenSCAD is that it makes creating models which may be described mathematically/programmatically easy. The awful thing about OpenSCAD is that what one can create in it is strongly bounded by one's facility with and fluency in mathematics. I'm curious how the new Python-enabled (I really hope it gets added in to the program itself) will affect this.

throwgfgfd25 2y ago
You said this so much more succinctly than me.
coryrc 2y ago
The awful thing is that you can only export triangles, so you can't make any true curves. If it was capable to true circles it would do everything I have ever needed to make.
- asveikau 2y ago
  I don't understand this. You can make triangles small enough that you can't tell the difference, and define them mathematically in terms of curves..? Isn't this how any rendering will ultimately work? The primitive is triangles.
  - WillAdams 2y ago
    Yes, but the representation as arcs allows one to defer the conversion to polylines/triangles until a later time. As an example, if doing V carving, the appearance will be smoother if the geometry is imported so as to have arcs/curves, deferring the conversion to polylines/straight line movements until the last possible moment on the machine. Arcs/Curves are also easier to work with if one needs to edit, and are more efficient in terms of representation/disk space/storage.
    - ddingus 2y ago
      All true. Great comment.

parski 2y ago

I think that sounds like a healthy approach to social ad platforms and the like.