Does anyone have pointers to wrapping a design around a cylinder in OpenSCAD? (It is even possible?)
My only thought is to create the design as a flat panel and lay it as a tangent to a cylinder (subtracting from the cylinder) and then do a loop that progressively lays it again as a tangent slowly moving around the cylinder and slowly moving along the flat panel. A bit of a nightmare though - but is there an easier way?
Assuming by “design” you mean an existing STL mesh, perhaps try using the io_mesh_openscad Blender plugin to get the pile of triangles into a form you can iterate over in OpenSCAD:
From there, you can decide how you want to functionally project the triangles on/thru your cylindrical surface.
I was hoping to avoid Blender as it makes my head hurt. 
Gotta pick your battles. 
Just import the source STL into blender, Select All & export it as OpenSCAD.
I’m not saying “I dislike Blender and will not use it” but the last time I tried, I clicked something, the menus all disappears, and I couldn’t even save a file. Got frustrated and gave up… I’ll give it another go though. 
Searh for Amazing on thingiverse. A maze on the outside of a cylinder.
Blender is my modeler of choice, and works perfectly for thing creation. You have to give it a chance and conquer its learning curve. Once you do that your the master of the universe.
I thought there was a library for this on Thingiverse…but I can’t seem to find it. This thing wraps a “cookie cutter” around a cylinder…so it might be a good starting point.
@Michael_Audette cool, now I can get rid of the reminder that’s been sitting on my computer for over a year because I figured out how to do this, but hadn’t had a chance to implement it…
the write.scad is not able to wrap on a surface.