Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

Comment by serf | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

it's noteworthy because a lot of similar solutions using OpenSCAD (progmatic on-demand creation of boxes/containers) are written poorly, and in many cases they only allow an arbitrary precision as set by the authors.

>This is kind of a CAD program, right? Why would it have trouble with any precision? Isn't it just juggling numbers?

this one kind of made me laugh only because of my familiarity with the history of CAD programs and what poor tasting dog-food has been served.

There is a long history of conversion errors, process errors, arbitrary formats and unit types, whatever. A CAD program that truly 'juggles numbers' is the holy grail, and the high tech solutions nowadays are getting pretty close to getting it right -- but it's been a journey and they're still not really there; every CAD suite has a list of no-nos that must always be kept in mind, and they're not engineering/science no-nos, they're "it'll break the software when I try to create a chamfer around this type of edge." kind of no-nos that are quirky and specific.

To be honest I'd also assume to be able to create arbitrarily sized boxes.

Last time I used OpenSCAD I didn't notice any arbitrary precision limitations — maybe the ones who expose interfaces to the web have them, but even there I don't seen how anything but millimeters would make sense (then again I live in Europe).

I’m also a content OpenSCAD user. I had zero 3D design experience when I bought my first 3D printer. OpenSCAD let me use my coding skills to program shapes for printing. I find the code-first approach much easier to reason about than graphics-first software.

Similarly, mm precision has been fine. All my dimensions are specified in mm, and parts come off the printer at the scale intended.

I’ve also had good luck with some open source OpenSCAD programs, particularly in the Gridfinity ecosystem.

OpenSCAD could use some polish, and perhaps a better packaging system, but it’s a reliable tool for me.

Halfway through the Gridfinity intro video and I've come back to thank you.

(I'm also already exhausted from the level of manic energy from Zach but I'll try drinking two cups of coffee and hope that gets me to the end)

I enjoy his energy so much, but it might be because we’ve both got ADHD and his pace, unnecessary divergences from the topic, alliteration, and absurdist humour gratifies my attention span and keeps me focused. That might seem counter intuitive.

I about had a stroke when I got to 11m54s in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra_9zU-mnl8#t=11m54s ; I think this is the correct transcription of that sentence:

> I did a whole episode on how more printers' printers print prints for printers' printers than printers print prints for printed projects

Cadquery is what you are looking for.

I also reach for OpenSCAD first when designing something for a 3d print, for a couple reasons:

1. I also didn't really have any actual 3d "design" experience before using OpenSCAD, except for in the 90s/00s when I played around with POVRay as a hobby, but OpenSCAD definitely feels a lot like writing POVRay scenes.

2. My first exposure to graphics programming was in OpenGL, and the OpenSCAD language's focus on transformations applying to children "rhymes" with that very well (they're just like a C-style if/for/while block, where you can either nest several things inside { } or else just have a single statement following the control structure and the transform applies only to that one thing, so

  cube(1);
  translate([1,1,1])cube(1);
  translate([2,2,2])cube(1);

is equivalent to

  cube(1);
  translate([1,1,1]){
    cube(1);
    translate([1,1,1]){
      cube(1);
    }
  }

which is in turn equivalent to

  module cubechain(n) {
    if (n > 0) {
      cube(1);
      translate([1,1,1])cubechain(n - 1);
    }
  }
  cubechain(3);

and you can indeed make neat L-systems and such out of primitives and recursion.

On the other hand, this here is just a program to design a box...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com