What does HackerNews think of cadquery?
A python parametric CAD scripting framework based on OCCT
You might be interested in CadQuery:
A fantasy of mine is to have a bag of arbitrary constraints and behaviors of agents that exercise the system. One could sketch a building, model the behavior of people that will use it and let the system run, doing backwards and forwards inference to evolve a structure that makes those agents satisfied across lots of criteria. The designer if they are still called that, can select designs they like and the system can use that as a seed or test oracle. Virtual cows, cow paths and evolvable structures wrt those cow paths.
What do you think of "Growing Neural Cellular Automata" [1]
Are you by chance following CadQuery? [2]
https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery
> CadQuery is often compared to OpenSCAD. Like OpenSCAD, CadQuery is an open-source, script based, parametric model generator. However, CadQuery stands out in many ways and has several key advantages:
> The scripts use a standard programming language, Python, and thus can benefit from the associated infrastructure. This includes many standard libraries and IDEs.
> CadQuery's CAD kernel Open CASCADE Technology (OCCT) is much more powerful than the CGAL used by OpenSCAD. Features supported natively by OCCT include NURBS, splines, surface sewing, STL repair, STEP import/export, and other complex operations, in addition to the standard CSG operations supported by CGAL
> Ability to import/export STEP and the ability to begin with a STEP model, created in a CAD package, and then add parametric features. This is possible in OpenSCAD using STL, but STL is a lossy format.
> CadQuery scripts require less code to create most objects, because it is possible to locate features based on the position of other features, workplanes, vertices, etc.
> CadQuery scripts can build STL, STEP, and AMF faster than OpenSCAD.
What are some of the advantages of OpenSCAD tooling?
There is also CadQuery, which claims to have fundamental technical advantages over OpenSCAD: https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery
I've tried CadQuery and had a rough time of it. I haven't used OpenSCAD at all though, so I can't compare.
There are things CAD-as-code excels at, but once you leave the happy path of simple primitives with a few holes and a bit of chamfer, I found things can get really ugly real quick. Organic shapes are very hard to construct, and simply generating polylines or the like either fails because OpenSCAD takes literal hours to render or because CadQuery throws some weird error halfway through and I just can't get it to work.
I'd love to see a free or at least affordable (for hobbyists) CAD solution that isn't code-only, cloud-only, totally crippled in terms of functionality, or extremely arcane. I believe Fusion 360 went cloud-only (or almost) last year or so, and between Fusion 360 and FreeCAD (which I tried to learn, but couldn't figure out) there seems to be a big opportunity for an affordable, user-friendly, open CAD tool for the 3D printer owning masses (there are dozens of us!)
edit: I also use Fusion360 for non-scripted stuff. The parametric modeling is nice!
CadQuery ( https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery )
PythonOCC ( https://github.com/tpaviot/pythonocc-core )
I haven't used it but it's been popping up in other threads since the licensing changes for Fusion360.
I eventually found CadQuery (https://github.com/CadQuery/cadquery) which can create non-mesh STEP files. It’s a lot rougher then OpenSCAD but usable.