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GabeIsko • today at 4:13 PM • 1 reply • view on HN

What is your beef with code based, parametric CAD? It's pretty neat.


Replies

CyLith • today at 6:50 PM

I love OpenSCAD and code-based CAD, but even I must admit it's really only good for simple things and is more of a toy than a tool to solve real world problems. The main issue is fundamental, which is that CSG operations change topology in unpredictable ways, and there is no reliable way to refer to the components of the result. This is already bad for a few operations, but becomes exponentially problematic for more complicated models. Even in 2D, suppose I want to make a C-shaped thing out of a box and subtracting a different box out of it. You don't know how many edges the result will have, or even how many connected components the result will have, so how do you go on to perform the next step "on that one part that I want" if it even exists? Of course for a single concrete instantiation this is not really a problem, but the whole point is to have the shape tunable based on parameters, and once you allow that all hell breaks loose.

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