About OpenSCAD
OpenSCAD is a software for creating solid 3D CAD models. It is free software and available for Mac, Windows, Linux and other UNIX-like OS’es. Unlike most 3D design software, the focus is not on the artistic aspects of 3D design but instead on the CAD aspects. This might be the application you are looking for when you are planning to create 3D designs for machine parts but is probably not what you are looking for when you are more interested in creating computer-animated movies. OpenSCAD is not an interactive modeller. Instead it is something like a 3D-compiler that reads in a script file that describes your object and renders the 3D model from this script file. This gives you, the designer, full control over the modelling process and enables you to easily change any step in your process or make designs that are defined by configurable parameters.
OpenSCAD provides two primary modelling techniques: Constructive solid geometry (aka CSG) as well as extrusion of 2D outlines. We support reading, both 2D outlines and 3D object from external design files, in a variety of file formats.
License
OpenSCAD is Free Software released under the GNU General Public License, version 2.
Underlying Technology
OpenSCAD builds on top of a number of free software libraries; is uses Qt for user interface, CGAL for CSG evaluation, OpenCSG and OpenGL for CSG previews. We also utilize a range of other free software libraries, like boost, eigen, glew, freetype, qscintilla, libxml2 and several others.
Related Projects
A number of projects were inspired by OpenSCAD, or in some other way is related to OpenSCAD. This is an incomplete list of some projects worth taking a look at:
Contact
OpenSCAD is maintained by Marius Kintel
General inquiries can be sent to info@openscad.org