Open SCAD: the programmer-oriented CAD

I often surf the Web looking for applications programming environments completely different from what I usually work with (I develop web application and services). Among these “completely different” things 3D graphics is one of the most appealing. So, while surfing the web I stumbled into this rather unusual CAD application: Open SCAD.

Open SCAD

Open SCAD is a 3D CAD application widely used among the 3D printers community. What makes it different from traditional CAD applications is the way you make your drawing: instead of using the mouse to drag lines, boxes in the classic four panels view (front, side, top and perspective) you “simply” write a program that defines how your drawing is.

Open SCAD language provides methods for the basic primitive solids like cube(), sphere(), cylinder() … methods to manipulate them like translate() and rotate(), CSG (constructive solid geometry) operations like union() difference(), intersection() … up to more complex operations like extrude() or rotate_extrude().