alt Hacker NewsOpenSCAD is perfect for the "programmer's brain" approach to CAD. Being able to parametrize everything means I can design something like a project enclosure once, then generate variants for different screen sizes or component layouts by just changing a few variables.
Pro tip: Use the latest nightly build and switch to the Manifold backend in preferences. Render times drop from minutes to seconds for complex models. The official 2021 release is painfully outdated.
Also, the BOSL2 library is essential - it adds proper filleting, rounding, and attachment operations that vanilla OpenSCAD lacks. Makes the difference between toy projects and actually useful designs.
The Git-friendliness is underrated too. Diffing .scad files is trivial compared to trying to understand what changed in a binary Fusion 360 file.
hmm, I didn't know about the BOSL2, I was struggling with fillets and chamfers, you basically had to figure out how to define them somehow which isn't really straightforward. Been using FreeCAD mostly which still has weird issues with fillets sometimes.