OpenSCAD Cookbook

OpenSCAD is for anyone who wants to learn how to 3D print. If you can use a ruler, you can use OpenSCAD!

This book is for Makers, Engineers, and anyone who wants to create 3D shapes for 3D printing or manufacturing.OpenSCAD has some great advantages over other software you might choose to use. It's free, runs on Windows, Macs, and Linux machines, has a much shorter learning curve, and it puts you in control of your designs instead of your designs controlling you!Using a fun, recipe-like pattern, this book guides you through simple 3D designs that cover 99% of the operations and techniques used day-to-day with OpenSCAD. You'll be baking and making in no time at all! Guidance is provided where you might need some of the more obscure features of the language, but the focus is on fast and efficient learning of the core basics.

OpenSCAD works in a different way compared to the expensive commercial software packages typically used for 3D design. Instead of interactively choosing from a multitude of obscure, hard to remember icons, buttons, menus, and sub-feature options to sketch out your designs with a mouse, OpenSCAD lets you edit a text-based script that creates your 3D objects. You get the best of both worlds, because you can easily pan, rotate, and zoom to see your creations in space, but the creation of those shapes is much more in your control and understanding.Contents:

• Getting Started
• Why Use OpenSCAD
• Install OpenSCAD Cheatsheet
• How to Learn from this Book
• Recipe 1: Hello World Meatball!
• Recipe 2: Create a Square Sheetcake
• Recipe 3: Parameterization
• Recipe 4: Create a Circle
• Recipe 5: Rotation and Translation
• Recipe 6: Create a Polygon
• Recipe 7: Trimming the Edges
• Recipe 8: Stamp Your Name On It
• Recipe 9: Extruding Into Space
• Recipe 10: Create a Donut
• Recipe 11: Kitchen Tips and Tricks
• Recipe 12: Functions, Modules, and Regular Polygons
• Recipe 13: No Matter How You Slice It
• Recipe 14: Create the “Holey” Grail
• Recipe 15: Birthday Candles & Other Common Cylinders
• Recipe 16: Ice Cubes for Party Drinks
• Recipe 17: Polyhedron Souffle
• Recipe 18: After-Dinner Mints and Toothpicks
• Recipe 19: Use a Recipe Box
• Recipe 20: Mirror Mirror on the Plane
• Recipe 21: Popcorn and Other Hulls
• Recipe 22: Minkowski Mints
• Appendix A
• Using OpenSCAD
• Menus
• Icons and Buttons
• Mouse Use
• Creating STLFiles
• Animation
• Index
• About John Clark Craig

REVIEWS:

As an OpenSCAD tutorial, this book is amazing. The examples are easy to follow. The pictures are crisp and the stepwise explanation of all the commands are very logical. It is an amazing teaching tool.

As a teacher, I used this book in my classroom. The students all found it understandable and their newfound skills in 3D printing and design have impressed many people, inside and outside of this classroom. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!