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constantcryingyesterday at 6:42 PM3 repliesview on HN

OpenSCAD is very cool, but completely unusable once you understand how great state of the art CAD Software like Fusion or Onshape is.

The big distinction is that those work implicitly, while OpenSCAD requires you to be implicit.


Replies

culiyesterday at 7:25 PM

I'm a programmer. I once had an idea stuck in my head for a 3d model that I just needed to get down somewhere. I tried learning the basics of AutoCAD but after 2 days of tutorials I still felt overwhelmed.

I looked into alternatives and learned about OpenSCAD. The immediate visual feedback makes picking up the language a breeze. Within an hour of downloading I familiarized myself with the language and had manifested my idea into a 3d model

I think that's a perfect example of a use-case where OpenSCAD shines. It's extremely easy to pick up if you have programming experience and it might even be a good thing to learn before moving onto more professional CAD software. From a teaching perspective, being able to have almost immediately-useful output is priceless

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WillAdamsyesterday at 7:02 PM

The thing is, I've crashed-and-burned every time I've tried to do traditional 3D CAD --- the closest I've come to success was making it all the way through the tutorial for Dune 3D:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37979758

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40228068

OpenSCAD "just works", even on quite limited hardware, and if one has trouble modeling something, well, arriving at a solution is just a matter of learning the appropriate mathematics.

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d_silinyesterday at 6:56 PM

excplicitely, you mean?