OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has again been accepted to Google Summer of Code.

Student application will open on March 18 (full timeline). Discussing project proposals early is highly encuraged for improving chances of acceptance.

Checkout the GSoC Flyer for a quick overview of what the program provides and how it works.

Project proposals have been posted to our OpenCAx site which lists all the projects proposed under the BRL-CAD umbrella. If you're interested in participating, please get in touch on the mailing list or join the #openscad channel on IRC to discuss details and to help you get your feet wet. We're also open to new ideas than just the ones listed on the proposal page.

If you're interested, please familiarize yourself with the requirements and application process.

While the OpenSCAD account on Twitter is not the most active one, it still was a nice place to see what people are designing and sharing. But with Twitter now moving into strange directions with surprising similarities to the freenode disaster like banning links to other social media sites we have removed the freshly added link to Mastodon from the Twitter bio again.

So here are the links to the 2 official accounts that are currently active:

• Mastodon: @OpenSCAD@fosstodon.org
• Twitter: openscad

A list of other groups and places can be found on the Community page.

OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has again been accepted to Google Summer of Code!

This years GSoC project titled "3D Viewport Graphical Enhancements" is meant to modernize part of the display code and give some support for nicer model presentation.

Abstract:

The project would allow the 3D viewport to support custom shaders for the render mode (F6). This requires retrieving the necessary uniforms and other shader input/outputs, then providing them to the program. Moreover, currently the GUI does not have options to allow the user to manage which shader is used, or add their own. The project would add these interface options to support shader management for the render by the user. Additionally, a set of default shaders could be included which the user could switch between.

Guest post introducing MakeWithTech

If you're into 3D printing, you know that Thingiverse¹ is an excellent place to find models to print. Unfortunately, the customizer on Thingiverse has been broken for a long time. MakeWithTech just released a new online service that allows you to customize OpenSCAD models. Browse models @ Thingiverse, select them for customization or upload them from your desktop, customize and queue for rendering. The models.makewithtech.com infrastructure supports hundreds of simultaneous renders using the genuine OpenSCAD software. Learn more by watching this YouTube video.

For many experienced users of OpenSCAD, this application is unnecessary. However, an online option is valuable for thousands of 3d printer users with no CAD or programming experience. Providing a web-based customizer that hides the OpenSCAD script creates an opportunity to develop a robust marketplace for OpenSCAD based designs.

As a beta, I am looking for input on features, reports of bugs, and thoughts about how a robust OpenSCAD marketplace would be structured. You can leave bug reports and feature suggestions right on the site via the link in the footer.

¹ The Thingiverse website is a copyrighted works belonging to MakerBot Industries, LLC.

Guest post introducing SOL75

Experimenting with the OpenSCAD language, SOL75 offers an online customizer where the inputs are the desired performances of a component. The software then finds a suitable value for each of the component parameters, modifying its geometry to make it compliant with the requested performances. This allows for example to directly specify the maximum mass for a part, or the mechanical load it shall support.

The project is geared toward functional mechanical parts, with built-in support for common printing materials, customizable printer configurations and dynamically generated documentation based on component requirements. You can have a look at SOL75 landing page or try the online demo directly.

OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has again been accepted to Google Summer of Code!

Student application will open from March 29 till April 13 (18:00 UTC! - full timeline) but don't wait for registration to open to get started! Discussing projects early is highly encuraged for improving chances of acceptance.

Checkout the GSoC Flyer for a quick overview of what the program provides and how it works. Note that this years coding period of GSoC will run for 10 weeks, so about half the time of previous years.

Project suggestions have been posted to our OpenCAx site which lists all the projects proposed under the BRL-CAD umbrella. If you're interested in participating, please get in touch on the mailing list or join the #openscad channel on IRC to discuss details and to help you get your feet wet. We're also open to new ideas than just the ones listed on the proposal page.

If you're interested, please familiarize yourself with the requirements and application process.

Talos reported CVE-2020-28599 (full report) against 2020.12-RC2, showing that specially crafted STL files could trigger a vulnerability. Thanks to the fortunate timing, this issue could be fixed before the final release, which means the OpenSCAD 2021.01 release is not affected by the issue. Many thanks to Talos for the well documented issue and good communication.

Even though the development cycle was a bit shorter than last time, it's still been almost 2 years and this has collected quite a long list of new features and bugixes for this release.

The big language change is the introduction of function literals but there are a number of other useful changes too, like the new exponent operator (^) and much better and more general support for tail recursion optimization.

The GUI and especially the Editor has seen a huge amount of new features. Most visible is probably the auto-complete which can propose built-in functions and modules.

Another much anticipated feature is the "jump to code" from the 3d preview. While it's not possible to go into the deepest levels of the design in all cases, it's a great tool to navigate designs.

But it's worth highlighting also some of the not so obvious smaller features which might improve the editing workflow.

• Bookmarks - Ctrl+F2 to toggle bookmarks, F2 / Shift+F2 for jumping to next/previous bookmark.
• Changing numbers via mouse - Similar to ALT+Cursor-Up/Down, numbers can be modified by placing the cursor at the number and using the mouse scroll wheel while pressing the ALT key.
• Code snippets - Insert often used code snippets using ALT+Insert or via editor context menu, custom templates can be added as simple files.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed to this release through development and community management, bug reports and fixes, documentation, translation, discussions, as well as testing the release candidates!

A special thank you goes to the Google Summer of Code students who have joined the OpenSCAD team for a couple of month and have helped to make some of those new features possible (details on those projects can be found in the project reports on github). It's been a nice time and an opportunity learn and discuss ideas.

The source code, as well as binaries for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux are ready for download.

An overview of changes since last release follows, for all the details including a list of bugfixes, see the release page on github.

Enjoy,
  The OpenSCAD Development Team.

Language Features

New

• Add function literals
• Add exponent function (e.g. 2^3)
• Add convexity parameter to resize()
• Add support for generic tail recursion
• Add $vpf for viewport field of view
• Add warnings for ranges with begin < end
• Add warnings for matrix structure problems

Changed

• Allow random seeds to stick between rands() calls
• Make comparison operators on mixed types return undef
• Track reason for values turning undef

Fixed

• Fix Range precision
• Fix empty geometry handling
• Fix search order for imported modules
• Improve internal handling of data values
• Improve performance of array concatenation
• Improve float accuracy of mirror matrix calculation
• Improve polygon and polyhedron warnings/errors

Program Features

GUI

• Add jump to source code from 3D preview
• Add Error-Log window for tracking errors and warnings
• Add window menu to allow keyboard access to all docked windows
• Enable default binary stl output, and ascii option
• Show message in console when caches are flushed
• Disable HTML rendering in console
• Enable color scheme for CGAL 2D render
• Simplified OpenCSG edge shader, with added smoothing
• New and updated translations: Chinese, Armenian, French, Russian, Polish, German

Editor

• Edit multiple files in tabs
• Switch tabs via Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab
• Modify numbers via mouse scroll (when holding ALT)
• Add auto-complete & call-tips for built-ins
• Add configurable code snippets
• Add (line) bookmarks
• Add jump to error
• Add support for line/block copy and move
• Add convenience context menu to tab header
• Open include<>/use<> files via inline link
• Fix search highlight for utf8 text
• Fix display of matches in search field
• Add Find/Find Next/Find Previous to editor context menu

Command line

• Support reading scripts from STDIN
• Support export to STDOUT
• Add multi-export on command line
• Add --animate command line option
• Add --export-format command line option
• Allow view-port variables in command-line mode
• Allow export to .ast, .csg, .echo and .term in preview mode
• Print statistics in cmdline mode as in GUI

General

• Add PDF export (single page only)
• Add support for line-cap and line-join in SVG import
• Add support stroke-linejoin in SVG import
• Change CGAL Union to join least complex geometries first
• Install start shortcut for all users on Windows
• Install icons with defined sizes (e.g. required by flathub)
• Switch to C++14 and allow usage of header-only CGAL
• Add support for lib3MF v2.0 API
• Update AppStream release info

Release candidate 6 is now available, fixes relative to RC5:

• Fix handling of file links with spaces or comma characters. (#3609)
• Fix STL import, don't try to import partial files.
• Prevent segfault on application quit while console messages are being logged.
• Fix delayed console output. (#3421)
• Update translations (zh_TW, de).
• Fix export_import_pngtest.py for relative source path.

Big thanks go to everyone helping with testing and fixing those issues. Assuming no more critical bugs are reported, this will be the release version.

The builds are available in the Release Candidates section of the download page.

Release candidate 5 is now available, fixes relative to RC4:

• Fix save error handling (#3582)
• Don't show autocomplete in strings. (#3563)
• Fix formatting of ECHO/NONE as plain text in console. (#3585)
• Make sure opencsg.h is included for version number reporting. (#3586)
• Fix uncaught exception from boost::fs.
• Close window on successful save all. (#3556)
• Fix autocomplete setup on show/hide editor to follow preferences. (#3572)
• Fix caching of Geometry. (#3547)
• Update examples/logo_and_text.scad and expected test results. (#3566)
• Omit "Features" from LibraryInfo when ENABLE_EXPERIMENTAL not defined.
• Show message in console when caches are flushed. (#3540)

Big thanks go to everyone helping with testing and fixing those issues. At this point there's no showstopper for a release, so if there's no new reports coming in, this could be the final release candidate.

The builds are available in the Release Candidates section of the download page. All builds, including MacOS are available now.

Release candidate 4 is now available, fixes relative to RC3:

• Don't return empty group for "if" statement with failing condition and no "else". (#3452)
• Fix template action shortcut to not clash with Copy&Paste. (#3558)
• Change context menu in 3D view to right-click only.
• Fix customizer presets. (#3522)
• Disable $vpX warning in GUI mode. (#3548)
• Fix initial console output. (#3549)
• Fix missing UI_Error group name. (#3551)
• Don't show trace lines in ErrorLog window.
• Fix location output in console.
• Show render statistics even if error resulted in no top level geometry. (#3532)
• Setup CGAL error behavior to allow catching processing problems.

Big thanks go to everyone helping with testing and fixing those issues. There's some more issues to check, so RC5 is already work in progress.

The builds are available in the Release Candidates section of the download page. The usual Windows and Linux (x86 64-bit, AArch64) builds are already available, MacOS builds will hopefully follow soon.

Release candidate 3 is now available, fixes relative to RC2:

• Handle case of flattening during iteration over VectorType. (#3541)
• Fix log output to separate preview/render executions. (#3533)
• Handle SCN_URIDROPPED introduced in QScintilla 2.11. (#3536)
• Add window menu to allow keyboard access to docked windows. (#3509)
• Calling tabifyDockWidget breaks window state save with Qt5.15/Linux.
• Handle empty first geometry in 2D Minkowski. (#3527)
• Abort Nef conversion early on invalid input, to avoid segfault. (#2847)
• Disable context menu editor switch if editor hidden. (#3519)
• Ensure experimental features are disabled in release. (#3517)

Big thanks go to everyone helping with testing and fixing those issues. There's some more issues to check, so I expect at least one more RC.

The builds are available in the Release Candidates section of the download page. The usual Windows and Linux (64-bit) build are already available, MacOS builds will hopefully follow soon.

It's been a while since the last release, but here it is release candidate 2020.12-RC2. This brings a number of new features, some highlights:

• Generic tail-recursion support
• Jump to code from 3D view
• Auto completion and calltips (parameter descriptions for built-in modules)
• Simple template support for code snippets
• Support for multiple tabs in the editor
• Export 2D designs to PDF (single page only)
• Separate error log window with jump to code support

The builds are available in the Release Candidates section of the download page. The usual Windows and Linux (64-bit) build are already available, MacOS builds will hopefully follow soon.

This release adds a number of features which have been in development for the last 4 years. Some of the larger program features are Customizer, which was first started as a Google Summer of Code project, and 3D input device support. The OpenSCAD language itself and standard library has seen a number of iterative improvements

The source code, as well as binaries for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux are ready for download.

As usual, thanks go to everyone who has contributed to this release through development and community management, bug reports and fixes, documentation, translation, discussions, as well as testing the development snapshots!

A summary of changes since last release follows.

Enjoy,

The OpenSCAD Development Team

Summary of changes

Language Features

• Added assert() module and assert() function
• Added let() module
• Added ord() function
• Added echo() function
• Added type testing functions: is_undef(), is_list(), is_num(), is_bool(), is_string()
• New special variable: $preview
• List comprehension updates: if/else condition, each keyword, C-style for loop, looping over characters of a string
• rotate_extrude(): Added angle parameter
• import() now supports SVG, 3MF and AMF
• color() now supports hex color codes

Program Features

• Customizer: Allow parametrizing design parameters with GUI customization
• 3D-Mouse / Joystick / Gamepad support
• 3D Printing support: Purchase from a print service partner or print to Octoprint
• New export file formats: SVG, 3MF, AMF
• Quick-edit and preview of values using Alt-Arrows (Shift-Alt-Arrows on macOS)
• Added --view cmd-line parameter
• Play sound notification on render complete
• Revamped errors and warnings
• New translations: Ukrainian, Polish

Deprecations

• Removed glide() and subdiv() which were never implemented

After a quiet summer, there's now progress integrating a number of features that were cooking in development branches for quite some time.

3D-Mouse support

Even though the initial effort was to support 3D-Mouse devices, specifically the relatively affordable range of SpaceMouse/SpaceNavigator products from 3Dconnexion, OpenSCAD will support various input devices (e.g. Joysticks and and Gamepads) depending on the platform it's running on.
The preferences dialog allows configuration of the behavior of the input devices regarding control of the 3D viewport and mapping buttons to user interface actions.

Customizer

Inspired by the Thingiverse Customizer, this will allow customizing designs via a simple user interface and save sets of parameter presets. While this feature has been available in the development snapshots for a while now, there were lots of improvements lately to both usability of the interface as well as correctly handling of parameters hints specified in the model source code.

3MF Import/Export

The 3D Manufacturing Format (3MF) as defined by the 3MF Consortium is one of the contenders to take over from STL. With support for extended features like colors, materials, properties, multiple volumes and the possibility to extend with both public and private features, it's much more versatile than the (for 3d printing) commonly used STL format. As additional reason for this format being a very attractive option is that its Specification and reference implementation are freely available and usable in Open Source projects.

At this point all of the features are available in the latest development snapshots but are still marked as experimental which means they need to be specifically enabled in the preferences dialog.

OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has again been accepted to Google Summer of Code!

Checkout the GSoC presentation for a quick overview of what the program provides and how it works.

Project suggestions have been posted to the wiki. If you're interested in participating, please get in touch on the mailing list or IRC to discuss details and to help you get your feet wet. We're also open to new ideas.

If you're interested, please familiarize yourself with the requirements and application process.

Student application is open from March 12 till March 27 (16:00 UTC! - full timeline) but don't wait for registration to open to get started! Discussing projects early is highly encuraged for improving chances of acceptance.

Suggested projects include:

• Improve DXF Import and Export
• Add support for exporting models in STEP format
• Improve text editor with new IDE style features
• OpenSCAD Standard Library
• OpenGL framework
• Persistent Caching
• Multi-threaded Geometry Evaluation
• Survey and prototype of CSG algorithms
• Issue handling and bug squashing
• Test Framework Improvements
• SVG import
• ...and more

OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has again been accepted to Google Summer of Code!

Project suggestions have been posted to the wiki. If you're interested in participating, please get in touch on the mailing list or IRC to discuss details and to help you get your feet wet. We're also open to new ideas.

If you're interested, please familiarize yourself with the requirements and application process.

Logo (c) Google

Suggested projects include:

• Improve DXF Import and Export
• OpenSCAD Standard Library
• OpenGL framework
• Persistent Caching
• Multi-threaded Geometry Evaluation
• Survey and prototype of CSG algorithms
• Issue handling and bug squashing
• Test Framework Improvements
• SVG import
• ...and more

The topic of this year's Google Summer of Code project is customization. This is a small mid-term update on the status of this project.

One of the primary benefits of OpenSCAD is the ability to design customizable content. These are designs which are parametrized using parameters or top-level variables.

Some projects utilize OpenSCAD's ability to customize designs as part of their web services, e.g. Thingiverse Customizer, Sculpteo Parametric Designs and e-NABLE Handomatic.

The goal of this project is two-fold, 1) offer an auto-generated GUI associated with a customizable design, making it easier to both create and use such designs and 2) offer an authoritative standard for how to specify meta-data to guide the generation of such a GUI. As a temporary measure, we're also planning to support the meta-data syntax used by Thingiverse, making it possible to use the thousands of customizable designs published there.

Want to learn more, or download development binaries for Mac or Windows? Our GSoC developer, Amarjeet Kapoor, has written a blog post detailing the state of the project: User Interface for Customizing Models.

We're also interested in your opinions on this. Feel free to reach out on the mailing list or #openscad on IRC.

OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has again been accepted to Google Summer of Code!

Project suggestions have been posted to the wiki. If you're interested in participating, please get in touch on the mailing list or IRC to discuss details and to help you get your feet wet. We're also open to new ideas.

If you're interested, please familiarize yourself with the requirements and application process.

Logo (c) Google

Suggested projects include:

• Form-based Customization
• Improve DXF Import and Export
• OpenSCAD Standard Library
• OpenGL framework
• Persistent Caching
• Multi-threaded Geometry Evaluation
• Survey and prototype of CSG algorithms
• Issue handling and bug squashing
• Test Framework Improvements
• ...and more

OpenSCAD 2015.03 has just been released!

This release adds a number of features which has been in development for some time. Most prominent are text(), offset() and list comprehension functionality, as well as a better editor and other GUI improvements implemented during last year’s Google Summer of Code.

The source code, as well as binaries for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux are ready for download.

Lots of thanks go to everyone who have contributed to this release through development, translation, bug reports, bug fixes, documentation, discussions, as well as testing the development snapshots!

A summary of changes since last release follows.

Take care,
-Marius

Summary of changes

Language Features

• Added text() module for 2D text
• Added offset() module for 2D offsets
• Added list comprehensions and let()
• Added concat() function
• Added chr() function
• surface() can now take PNG images as input
• min() and max() can now take a vector argument
• 2D minkowski can now handle polygons with holes
• Variables can now be assigned in local blocks without using assign()

Program Features

• Added Toolbar icons
• New code editor based on QScintilla
• Added Splash screen
• Added SVG export
• Added AMF export
• Added --viewall and --autocenter cmd-line parameters
• GUI is now translated into German, Czech, Spanish, French and Russian
• MDI (Multiple Document Interface) is now available on all platforms
• Color schemes for viewer and editor can be user-edited using JSON files
• GUI components are now dockable
• Added Tickmarks on axes

Bugfixes/improvements

• Performance improvement: 2D (clipper), preview, hull, minkowski, surface
• Performance improvement: Reduce duplicate evaluation of identical expressions
• Better recursion behavior
• STL export and import is now more robust
• Internal cavities are better supported
• New examples
• Windows cmd-line behaves better
• Better mirror() and scale() behavior when using negative factors

Deprecations

• polyhedron() now takes a faces= argument rather than triangles=
• assign() is no longer needed. Local variables can be created in any scope

OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has again been accepted to Google Summer of Code!

Project suggestions have been posted to the wiki. If you're interested in participating, please get in touch on the mailing list or IRC to discuss details and to help you get your feet wet. We're also open to new ideas.

If you're interested, please familiarize yourself with the requirements and application process.

Logo (c) Google CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0

Suggested projects include:

• Form-based Customization
• Improve DXF Import and Export
• OpenSCAD Standard Library
• OpenGL framework
• Persistent Caching
• Multi-threaded Geometry Evaluation
• Survey and prototype of CSG algorithms
• Issue handling and bug squashing
• Test Framework Improvements
• ...and more

As mentioned earlier, OpenSCAD participated in Google Summer of Code 2014 as part of the BRL-CAD umbrella. We accepted one student, Shaina Sabarwal, this summer to work on a user interface brushup project. Please head over to her blog post summarizing her work.

We're also happy to announce that as of today, we've merged all her contributions to our github master branch. The latest binary snapshot containing the new features is available for download.

Thanks to Shaina and Google, as well as Torsten for mentoring, for making this project possible!

Logo (c) Google CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0

OpenSCAD 2014.03 has just been released!

The source code, as well as binaries for Mac OS X, Windows and Linux are ready for download.

Lots of thanks go to everyone who've contributed to this release through development, testing, bug reports, discussions and bounties.

A summary of changes since last release follows.

Take care,
-Marius

Summary of changes

Language Features

• Added diameter argument: circle(d), cylinder(d, d1, d2) and sphere(d)
• Added parent_module() and $parent_modules
• Added children() as a replacement for child()
• Unicode strings (using UTF-8) are now correctly handled
• Ranges can have a negative step value
• Added norm() and cross() functions

Program Features

• Cmd-line: --info parameter prints system/library info
• Cmd-line: --csglimit parameter to change CSG rendering limit
• Cmd-line: Better handling of cmd-line arguments under Windows
• GUI: Added Reset View
• GUI: Added Search&Replace in editor
• GUI: Syntax highlighting now has a dark background theme
• GUI: We now create a backup file before rendering to allow for recovery if OpenSCAD crashes/freezes
• GUI: Accessibility features enabled (e.g. screenreading)

Bugfixes/improvements

• Reading empty STL files sometimes caused a crash
• OPENSCADPATH now uses semicolon as path separator under Windows
• polyhedron() is now much more robust handling almost planar polygons
• Automatic reloads of large designs are more robust
• Boolean logic in if() statements are now correctly short-circuited
• rands() with zero range caused an infinite loop
• resize(, auto=true) didn't work when shrinking objects
• The $children variable sometimes misbehaved due to dynamic scoping
• The --camera cmd-line option behaved differently then the corresponding GUI function
• PNG export now doesn't leak transparency settings into the target image
• Improved performance of 3D hull() operations
• Some editor misbehaviors were fixed
• Stability fixes of CGAL-related crashes
• Windows cmd-line can now handle spaces in filenames
• Default CSG rendering limit is now 100K elements
• Fixed a crash reading DXF files using comma as decimal separator
• Fixed a crash running the cmd-line without a HOME env. variable
• Intersecting something with nothing now correctly results in an empty object

Deprecations

• child() is no longer supported. Use children() instead.
• polyhedron(triangles=[...]): Use polyhedron(faces=[...]) instead.

Misc

• Test framework now shares more code with the GUI app
• Test report can now be automatically uploaded to dinkypage.com
• Better compatibility with BSD systems
• Qt5 support

OpenSCAD, in collaboration with BRL-CAD, has been accepted to Google Summer of Code 2014!

Project suggestions have been posted to the wiki. If you're interested in participating, please get in touch on the mailing list or IRC to discuss details and to help you get your feet wet. We're also open to new ideas.

If you're interested, please familiarize yourself with the requirements and application process.

Logo (c) Google CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0

Suggested projects include:

• Issue Handling
• Test Framework Improvements
• Thingiverse Customizer and Sculpteo customizer support
• User interface brushup
• Improve DXF import
• OpenGL framework
• Persistent caching
• Multi-threaded Geometry Evaluation
• Web front-end
• Larger tasks for particularly experienced people

OpenSCAD 2013.06 has just been released!

The source code, as well as the Mac OS X binaries can be downloaded. Binaries for Windows and Linux will trickle in when they've been built and tested.

Thanks goes to everyone who's contributed to this release, through development, bug reports, email discussions and being willing to use development snapshots.

As usual, we've added and modified a few language features, as well as added functionality in the GUI and cmd-line tools, as well as a long list of bugfixes and stability improvements.

A summary of changes since last release follows.

Take care,
-Marius

Summary of changes

Language Features

• linear_extrude now takes a scale parameter:
  linear_extrude(height=a, slices=b, twist=c, scale=[x,y])
• Recursive use of modules is now supported (including cascading child() operations), see example024
  
• Parameter list values can now depend on earlier values: for (i=[0:2], j=[0:i])
• value assignments in parameters can now depend on already declared parameters
• Added resize() module

Program Features

• Added basic syntax highlighting in the editor
• There is now a built-in library path in user-space
• Commandline output to PNG, with various camera and rendering settings.
  Run openscad -h to see usage info or see the user manual
• Attempting to open or drag&drop dxf, off or stl files in the GUI will now create an import statement.
• The preview operator (%) will now preserve any manually set color
• The highlight operator (#) will now color the object in transparent red
• Mac: Added document icon
• Mac: Added auto-update check
• Windows: Better cmd-line support using the openscad.com executable

Bugfixes

• Importing files is now always relative to the importing script, also for libraries
• We didn't always print a warning when CSG normalization created too many elements
• Binary STLs can now be read on big endian architectures
• Some binary STLs couldn't be read
• Fixed some issues related to ARM builds
• CGAL triangulation more lenient - enables partial rendering of 'bad' DXF data
• The Automatic Reload feature is now more robust
• If a file couldn't be saved it no longer fails silently
• Fixed a number of crashes related to CGAL and OpenCSG rendering or complex models
• The lookup() function had bad boundary condition behavior
• The surface() module failed when the .dat file lacked a trailing newline
• The hull() module could crash if any of the children were empty objects
• Some problems using unicode filenames have been fixed

Misc

• Build scripts have been further improved
• Regression test now creates single monolithic .html file for easier uploading
• Regression test auto-starts & stops Xvfb / Xvnc if on headless unix machine
• The backend is finally independent of Qt
• Windows: We now have a 64-bit version

Known Bugs

• Linux: command-line png rendering on Gallium is flaky.
  Workaround: use CGAL --render or hardware rendering.

After years of ignoring the OpenSCAD website, it's finally time to give it a well-deserved facelift. The whole site is fully reworked, the content has been made a lot more available, especially the documentation. We've also launched a web forum mirror of the mailing list at forum.openscad.org. The gallery page is still work in progress and will gradually be populated with a better selection of examples.

Feedback, suggestions for changes or patches are welcome (PS! the website is a git repository).

Thanks to Jane Tingley and Max Stein for helping out with content, visual design and web development.

I've just released OpenSCAD 2013.01. The source package as well as the Mac OS X binaries can be downloaded from openscad.org. Binaries for Linux and Windows will appear when the package managers get them built and tested.

Thanks a lot to all contributors - there has been significant contributions, especially towards build systems and automated testing!

Have fun,
-Marius

Summary of changes in this release:

Features

• Snappier GUI while performing CGAL computations (computations running in separate thread)
• The size of the misc. caches can now be adjusted from Preferences
• The limit for when to disable OpenCSG can now be adjusted from Preferences
• Added Dot product operator: vec * vec
• Added Matrix multiplication operator: vec * mat, mat * mat
• Added search() function
• Dependencies are now tracked - any changes in uses/included files will be detected and cause a recompile
• The OPENSCADPATH environment variable is now implemented will have precedence when searching for libraries
• .csg files can now be opened from the GUI
• linear_extrude() will now assume that the first parameter means 'height' if it's a number

Bugfixes

• use'ing an non-existing file sometimes crashed under Windows
• Better font handling: Ensure a monospace font is chosen as default
• Division by zero caused hang in some cases (e.g. sin(1/0))
• Larger minkowski operations sometimes caused a crash after a CGAL assert was thrown
• Fixed crashes in shared_ptr.hpp (or similar places) due bugs in cache management and CSG normalization
• scale() with a scale factor of zero could cause a crash
• Fixed a number of issues related to use/include
• Providing an unknown parameter on the cmd-line caused a crash
• cmd-line overrides using -D now also work for USEd modules
• Modifier characters can now be used in front of if statements
• rotate() with a vector argument with less that 3 elements used uninitialized variables, ending up being non-deterministic.
• .csg files will now have relative filenames whenever possible
• Don't just ignore geometric nodes having zero volume/area - when doing difference/intersection, they tend to turn negative objects into positive ones.
• Always use utf-8 file encoding, also under Windows
• A lot of build script fixes
• Some other crash bugs fixes

Deprecations

• The old include syntax "<filename.scad>" without the include keyword is no longer supported and will cause a syntax error.

I've just released OpenSCAD 2011.12. The source package as well as the Mac OS X binaries can be downloaded from openscad.org. Binaries for Linux and Windows will appear when the package managers get them built and tested.

This release of OpenSCAD has taken a lot of time to get out the door, primarily due to the backend being refactored to facilitate further development and the introduction of a regression test framework. The combination of these should make it possible to do more rapid releases in the future.

Thanks a lot to all contributors!

Have fun,
-Marius

Summary of changes in this release:

Features

• The MCAD library is now bundled with OpenSCAD
• Added len() function. Takes one vector or string parameter and returns its length.
• The index operator [] now works on strings
• The version() function will return the OpenSCAD version as a vector, e.g. [2011, 09]
• The version_num() function will return the OpenSCAD version as a number, e.g. 20110923
• hull() Now supports 3D objects
• hull() with 2D object can now use for loops and boolean operations as children
• New import() statement reads the correct file format based on the filename extension (.stl, .dxf and .off is supported)
• The color() statement now supports an alpha parameter, e.g. color(c=[1,0,0], alpha=0.4)
• The color() statement now supports specifying colors as strings, e.g. color("Red")
• The color() statement now overrides colors specified further down in the tree
• if()/else() and the ternary operator can now take any value type as parameter. false, 0, empty string and empty vector or illegal value type will evaluate as false, everything else as true.
• Strings can now be lexographically compared using the <, <=, >, >= operators
• Added PI constant.
• Number literals in scientific notation are now accepted by the parser
• Added import and export of the OFF file format
• Now uses standard shortcuts for save, reload and quit on Linux and Windows. F2/F3 will still work but is deprecated.

Bugfixes:

• Complex CSG models sometimes took extremely long time to normalize before OpenCSG preview
• square() crashed if any of the dimensions were zero
• Flush Caches didn't flush cached USE'd modules
• STL export should be a bit more robust
• Dropping a file into the editor under Windows didn't work (double C:/C:/ problem)
• On some platforms it was possible to insertion rich text in the editor, causing confusion.
• Less crashes due to CGAL assertions
• OpenCSG should now work on systems with OpenGL 1.x, given that the right extensions are available
• include now searches librarydir
• The $fs parameter yielded only half the number of segments it should have
• surface(center=true) is now correctly centered in the XY plane

Deprecations:

• dxf_linear_extrude() and dxf_rotate_extrude() are now deprecated.
• se linear_extrude() and rotate_extrude() instead.
• The file, layer, origin and scale parameters to linear_extrude() and rotate_extrude() are now deprecated. Use an import() child instead.
• import_dxf(), import_stl() and import_off() are now deprecated. Use import() instead.
• When exporting geometry from the cmd-line, use the universal -o option. It will export to the correct file format based on the given suffix (dxf, stl, off). The -x and -s parameters are still working but deprecated.
• F2 and F3 for Save and Reload is now deprecated