Like SCAD but pleasant to use.

3D Printing
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1

Like SCAD but pleasant to use. Can it really be?!
http://hackaday.com/2015/05/29/otherworldy-cad-software-hails-from-a-parallel-universe/

2

This is pretty cool. I just wonder if, like other model based tools, the graph would get very unwieldy as the object gets more complex. For sure it will need collapsible “modules”.

3

Interesting

4

@Brad_Hopper
I does come down to how well the graph is managed, especially as it gets bigger.

They have traded off the free-form CAD-style 3D editing for a graph describing the construction steps, which is clever. But the trade-off may not work if the graph gets large, complicated and unwieldy.

You make a good point about collapsing ports of the graph into “modules” - I think that would be necessary to avoid it getting too big.

5

My impression is that just like openscad, you write code to do the CAD, but the nodes allow you to tweak values more easily.
It’s worth noting that OpenScad also has some GUI elements/sliders for tweaking values now (I think).
I read somewhere that this i functional and based on boundary functions, which worries me a bit as implicitcad went down that road and found some big problems (notably rendering time). The creator of implicitcad has said that he considers it a worthy experiment but that the approach ultimately is not worth it (or something to that effect, I can’t remember exactly).
What I’m most excited about is that it has a proper language (python) instead of the abomination that is openscad.

6

I downloaded this and had a play last night. It’s extremely good. I had a basic model created in few minutes and exported it to my slicer and printed it without issue. I love the way the STL exporter is a node so you can easily split complex objects into multiple files.

7

@Daniel_Bull
This sounds really, really good!

As soon as I get some free time (where can I buy some time???) I want to have a play with this, as well as OpenSCAD.

8

@Oystein_Krog
Having just installed it and had a play, you can do all the interesting stuff via the GUI - you can also get into the code and do things at that level, but it’s all GUI based as far as I can see.

9

I’ve been using OpenSCAD for more than a couple of years, but since Autodesk Fusion 360 is now available for free, it’s unlikely I’ll continue to use OpenSCAD or consider trying the above to be honest.

With OpenScad and the like, it was just too much like hard work to use at times, especially if you needed customizable assemblies.

10

I’ve appreciated the power of OpenSCAD for some time but as I’m only a casual user it always seemed like a lot of work so I stuck with 123D Design which got the job done. I’m seriously thinking of changing to this after using it though, its excellent.

11

V

12

I can’t wait for someone to compile this for windows.