Book Image

Simplifying 3D Printing with OpenSCAD

By : Colin Dow
5 (1)
Book Image

Simplifying 3D Printing with OpenSCAD

5 (1)
By: Colin Dow

Overview of this book

Want to bring your 3D designs to life with OpenSCAD, but don’t know where to start? Simplifying 3D Printing with OpenSCAD will teach you the key skills so that you can focus on your ideas, not troubleshooting your 3D printer. With the help of this book, you’ll build a solid foundation in 3D printing technology, the software used for designing your objects, and an analysis of the G-code produced by the 3D printer slicer software. You’ll also get to know your 3D printer and find out how to set up a printing job effortlessly — from configuring the parameters to build well-defined designs. Consider yourself a practical learner? Use real-world examples such as designing and printing a 3D name badge, model rocket, and laptop stand, to dive into the world of 3D printers build your skillset. By the end of this 3D printing book, you'll be ready to start designing and printing your own 3D printed products using OpenSCAD and being your ideas into reality.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Part 1: Exploring 3D Printing
5
Part 2: Learning OpenSCAD
9
Part 3: Projects
13
Part 4: The Future

Exploring OpenSCAD Single Topic libraries

Now that we understand how OpenSCAD standard libraries can be utilized to improve our designs, let's look at what are called OpenSCAD Single Topic libraries. As their name implies, OpenSCAD Single Topic libraries are used for specific purposes, such as creating a threaded nut for a design. There are six libraries listed on the OpenSCAD website (http://openscad.org/libraries.html) under Single Topic. We will look at the four most relevant (for our purposes) libraries:

  • Round Anything
  • Mark's Enclosure Helper
  • The OpenSCAD threads.scad module
  • The OpenSCAD smooth primitives library

Let's start with the Round Anything library.

Round Anything

The motivation behind the Round Anything library is, as its name implies, to round parts. Standard OpenSCAD code lacks the functionality for rounding basic shapes. Installing this library provides a good tool to use in our designs.

For our example, however, we...