3D Printing: Designing with openscad

[@RadekSuski]

This is an awesome tutorial. Thanks a lot. As a long time software developer I had to say your excitement about programming kinda gave me a big smile.

[@ozzloy]

this whole thing is so so neat! you made a really great openscad intro video. it's awesome that you already know programming and were able to take it up and apply it to making something for yourself so quickly! i'm so happy to have brought openscad to your attention!

[@iqless]

Thanks so much for showing me. I just had no clue. This are big reasons for openscad to exist. I can see myself using Fusion 360 60-80% of the time but using Openscad the rest for designs that lend themselves more to exact geometry and especially customization. I also like the idea of being able to version it easily in github.

[@iqless]

Oh and yep I am a programmer. That is what I do to pay the bills ;) I have a bachelors degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Computer Science.

[@magnuswootton6181]

dropped straight into the 3d printer slicer! beautiful.

[@RobertBlow]

You have some great ideas on your homeschooling which will be relevant for them in the future. Keep thinking outside the box. Taking the printer to the Friday class sounds like a great idea which could instill a potentially lifelong interest in design and technology. I'm 47 and a pivotal point in my life was at 11 years old when I met my IT teacher which ignited a fire inside me which has not faded one bit in all the years and given me a career and a hobby. As a side note, I have a Prusa I3 which I have yet to unpack (I have had a couple of other printers over the last few years) and find your enthusiasm is inspiring me to look at things differently- like giving this coding a go. Take care and thanks...

[@iqless]

Thanks for the story :) I think you would like the coding, despite what some folks say you are never too old to learn some new cool stuff. Hopefully over the next year I will make some more videos on openscad and coding

[@MichealWeinfurtner]

That looks like fun to play with. Like how you can embed options for scale. Got something new to play with now...Yeah!

[@iqless]

Its a really interesting tool. And a lot of people are using it for some cool designs.

[@kevinstroud3472]

Ive been using Openscad since i made my prusa mendel. Its can do an awful lot with practice.

[@cellularmitosis2]

Thank you for being so thorough in your videos! I’m curious if you’ve heard of Gridfinity? Your paint bottle rack would make a great gridfinity module

[@jarnold2000]

Good intro to openscad. Thanks for the video!

[@iqless]

Thanks, nice of you to say

[@csmcstrsshd]

Thanks for this intro! I've a good handle on where to start, now. Nice one :)

[@iqless]

Cool Openscad is a really neat program and great things are being made with it.

[@BasherOfficial-fd6gn]

Wow.. This is good.. As a software programmer, i have always felt bored spending hours making a single model in blender and other mouse based CAD software...models not easily reused, moving the mouse, shortcuts, hidden menus...... OpenScad is like my way out

[@robertlackey7212]

Great video ! I recently found out my old CF-30 running Linux Mint won't run Blender , so I was looking for a alternative , and for what I am doing this is perfect , It runs on Linux , I normally design in 2D on QCAD and only need a small percent in 3D , so I plan to use SCAD to take the design I have already perfected in QCAD and error check and turn it into a 3D STL file. I really like how you could use SCAD as a error checker.

[@KenHackbarth]

There's a later version, further down the page, that supports the "Customizer" function.

[@iqless]

I will have to go check that out

you can put a # in front of an object to highlight it !

[@iqless]

I did not know that I need to try that out

[@RColbert]

Technically, STLs are also unitless. The slicer/viewer guesses at the units for you.

[@iqless]

I did not know that, good to know Thanks for the information :)

[@PeterVerhas]

Binary STL first 80 bytes can contain unit information. The actual way is not part of the standard. (Source wikipedia)

[@kevinstroud3472]

the paint holder would have been more elegant as the difference of two unions.

[@magnuswootton6181]

If you dont want it to go slow I think you put the for loops inside the difference, not the difference in the for loop.

[@magnuswootton6181]

I can hear planes in the background - go the air power!!! =)

[@kevinstroud3472]

$fn = ???, used as a global slows things down heaps, using it for just the parts you need it on will speed things up.

[@iqless]

Very good tip

[@linzenmeyer]

I see your reading list on the wall back there.....add "The Forever War" by Joe Haldeman

[@MrWaalkman]

Without a doubt!

[@ozzloy]

you are pronouncing that right. EDIT: "that" == "ozzloy"

[@iqless]

Thanks I feel better. :) I hate murdering someone's name

[@ozzloy]

heh, don't worry, i wouldn't mind even if you did pronounce it wrong. i'm a guy. i'm still watching and just saw the point where you weren't sure about that.

[@ozzloy]

oh, derp, my real life name is danny. i kinda like being called "ozzloy" out loud. it's novel.

[@ozzloy]

i guess i'll keep adding comments here. check out the modifiers "!", "#", and "%". very useful for inspecting someone else's code or debugging your own code. the exclamation point means "draw only the thing right after the exclamation point". useful when you want to design a new small piece, and you already have a bunch of other stuff. the pound sign means "highlight the piece". useful to find out what part of the shape is modified by the part of code. sometimes i use it to highlight different parts of code until i highlight the part i'm interested in, and now i know what piece of code corresponds to that part of the shape. the percent sign means "make this transparent, so i can see what's inside". it indicates that something isn't part of the final shape, but you still want to see it. i often add at the beginning of my code the build volume, like this: %cube([250, 210, 210]); then i know whether my shape fits within the printable volume.

[@ozzloy]

also, this is so cool to see someone make a video about code i wrote!

[@DormantIdeasNIQ]

open source free from Google... LOL soon to be 'sold' to some third party company(google friendly) and cost you money... save all your stuff in portable format, so you can pass to another free software.

[@iqless]

The openscad tool's git repo github.com/openscad/openscad This tool has been released under the GNU General public licsense github.com/openscad/openscad/blob/master/COPYING For more details (in a simple readable format) tldrlegal.com/license/gnu-general-public-license-v3-(gpl-3)#summary

[@PeterVerhas]

New versions rewritten from zero may be sold for money. Modified version, containing as few as one line of code must be published as GPL.