Re:CADmium: A Local-First CAD Program Built for the Browser
by ecjhdnc2025 on Sunday May 26, 2024 @05:02PM
(#40485367)
Belatedly: this engine has one absolutely fantastic advantage, too.
Because it interprets the file as a sequence of Part object manipulations, it's a very useful way of getting a bRep representation of an OpenSCAD document, so you get the opportunity to generate a clean, minimal STEP file.
OpenSCAD cannot do this itself, and the other conversion approaches just get you a triangle mesh packaged in a STEP file.
It's not perfect -- you get a mesh if you use Minkowski or hull operations. But it's good.
I started with OpenSCAD but found FreeCAD to be way more productive for me when it came to actually producing 3d objects. Sometimes I want to start with a square, then delete a line, and add a semi circle. But I don't always know that until I start sketching. With OpenSCAD I feel you have to know the shape primitive you need, then the exact way to modify it, and the fact that it encourages 3D primitives over 2d w/ extrusion and rotating was kinda annoying imo.