Workshop 25th February 2016 3 p.m. 177/2023
Constructive Solid Geometry with OpenSCAD
Ashley Setter and Thorsten Wittemeier
University of Southampton, EPSRC CDT in NGCM
- Categories
- CFD, Computer Science, Design, Finite elements, Linux, Mac OS X, Materials, Multi-physics, NGCM, OpenFOAM, Optimisation, Scientific Computing, Software Engineering, Structural dynamics, Surface imaging, VirtualBox, Visualisation, Windows
- Submitter
- Thorsten Wittemeier
Simple example of an OpenSCAD geometry
Constructive solid geometry (CSG) is an approach to modelling solid objects where simple objects are combined using Boolean operators. As opposed to CAD software, a scripting language is used. This allows for automated creation within a larger code. One of the oldest scripting languages is PLaSM (Programming Language of Solid Modeling), which has been developed since the 1980s and is now also available embedded in Python within the pyplasm package.
In this seminar we present OpenSCAD, which makes use of OpenCSG and Open GL and has a very active user community. It is open-source software available for the most important operating systems.
The seminar will cover the following topics:
- Introduction to Constructive Solid Geometry
- Constructing geometric objects using OpenSCAD
- OpenSCAD as a functional programming language
- Practical application and external libraries
Exercises will demonstrate the range of possibilities that OpenSCAD has to offer. Please bring your own laptop with VirtualBox installed. A virtual machine image with OpenSCAD installed can be downloaded using the following link:
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/~ngcmbits/virtualmachines/feeg6003Debian_OpenSCAD.ova