OpenSCAD project

This page contains the details of a technical writing project accepted for Google Season of Docs.

Project summary

Open source organization:

OpenSCAD

Technical writer:

Themistoklis Spanoudis

Project name:

Create an OpenSCAD Tutorial

Project length:

Standard length (3 months)

Project description

Due to the advancement of electronic computers, CAD has gained a lot of popularity in the latest decades. During the recent years especially, the commercialization of 3d printers has further increased the popularity of CAD for prototyping in industry and academia but also among hobbyists. Meanwhile, the pricing of commercial CAD software can often be prohibitive for a lot of users and the associated time required for learning the software can be discouraging. OpenSCAD is an open source software that allows the creation of complex 2d and 3d solid CAD models for use in any appropriate application. Using OpenSCAD, the user can programmatically create complex fully parametric CAD models that are rendered from a script file and thus can be effectively changed, customized and extended. In commercial software, where the boundary representation is used to create models, fully parameterizing them would require working with their complex object-oriented APIs. In contrast, OpenSCAD uses constructive solid geometry which enables the user to build fully parameterized models using a smaller set of fundamental shapes and commands, thus providing lower learning overhead for new users. This tutorial is targeting users without previous CAD experience or without knowledge of OpenSCAD and is designed to help them comprehend the capabilities of CAD modelling and get them started with creating their own fully parametric models in OpenSCAD as soon as possible.