tonowie1 / constructive

Extends OpenScad Language for complex and complementary mechanical parts with less mathematical code. Offers a "Stamping" approach to quickly create mechanical parts fitting and complementing one another. This is used as a replacement for Constraints known form other CAD systems

Constructive Library:

Extends OpenScad Language for complex and complementary mechanical parts with less mathematical code. Offers a "Stamping" approach to quickly create mechanical parts fitting and complementing one another. This is used as a replacement for Constraints known form other CAD systems

Easily create holes from modules and overcome many Openscad's limitiations for complex models using the library's own syntax.

Compiles directly by OpenScad. No other tools needed. Just include the: constructive-compiled.scad in your .scad file, that is all.

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Constructive Library (about 1900 lines of Code) introduces a different approach to OpenScad Syntax: you rarely need difference(), for(),intersection() or their one-to-one equivalents, In the library's own dialect a for() block might look like:

pieces(4) X(every(35)) turnXY (vals(10,25,-15,40)) cube(10);

It is all valid OpenScad, you do not need any additional programs, just the OpenScad and the constructive-compiled.scad file.

The Constuctive-Syntax tries to align more with mechanical construction of parts and less with mathematical concepts like arrays, vectors and functions. (but they are heavily used behind the scenes). So it aims to be more concise and fluent for mechanical parts than vanilla OpenScad. It allows you to make holes from Modules and really good deal more.

For a basic introduction (specially if you are new to Openscad ) see the beginners tutorial it explains Constructive Syntax for main Building blocks, like tube(), box() or bentStrip() and their placement and alignment in space like stack() , align(), X(),Y(),Z() or turnXZ()

Part II tutorial shows somee basic object modification like reflectX(), cScale() ,or colors and then goes on to explain, how to work with sets of similar objects without for(), with: pieces(), span(), vals(), selectPieces(), etc..

Part III tutorial shows more advanced Features like grouping commands into a g() group, working with Parts, and combinig them into Assembly

For a more advanced use also look at the explanations inside the example below

https://github.com/solidboredom/constructive/blob/main/examples/mount-demo.scad

there is also another Example at:

https://github.com/solidboredom/constructive/blob/main/examples/pulley-demo.scad

The easiest way to try out the Library is to download the kickstart.zip

Still uncovered are inverse transformations like in:

g(X(10),Y(15),turnXY(45),X(30))

g(backwards([X(10),Y(15),turnXY(45),X(30)])

    box(10);

also part inheritance, part selector prefixes, internal type Ssystem and some more features

Try it! i hope you will find it as useful as i do.

Peter