Title: Port of the week: OpenSCAD

	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"