Title: Port of the week: OpenSCAD
Author: Solène
Date: 04 July 2016
Tags: portoftheweek
Description: 

OpenSCAD is a software for creating 3D objects like a programming
language, with the possibility to preview your creation.

I am personaly interested in 3D things, I have been playing with 3ds
Max and Blender for creating 3d objects but I never felt really
comfortable with them. I discovered pov-ray a few years ago which is
used to create rendered pictures instead of creating objects. Pov-ray
use its own "programming language" to describe the scene and make the
render. Now, I have a 3D printer and I would like to create things to
print, but I don't like the GUI stuff of Blender and Pov-ray don't
create objects, so... OpenSCAD ! This is the pov-ray of objects !

Here is a simple example that create an empty box (difference of 2
cubes) and a screw propeller:

    height = 3;
    depth = 6;
    thickness = 0.2;

        cube( [width,depth,height], true);

        cube( [width-thickness, depth-thickness, height], true);
    }

        linear_extrude(twist = 400, height = height*2)
            square(2,true);

The following picture is made from the code above:

 ![openscad][] 

 files. scad-mode will check the coloration/syntax and scad-preview
 will create the OpenScad render inside a Emacs pane. Personaly, I use
 OpenSCAD opened in some corner of the screen with option set to
 render on file change, and I edit with emacs. Of course you can use
 any editor, or the embedded editor which is a Scintilla one which is
 pretty usable.

[OpenSCAD website](http://www.openscad.org/index.html)

[OpenSCAD gallery](http://www.openscad.org/gallery.html)

[openscad]: static/openscad-rendu.png "Openscad render picture"