Talk:OpenSCAD User Manual

=New Discussions=

Comparison with FreeCAD
Will a short comparison on how it differs from other foss cad software: freecad differs can help too. Like it's already given wrt blender. Yashpalgoyal1304 (discuss • contribs) 19:19, 1 April 2021 (UTC)

Legal identifiers for OpenSCAD
Can someone who is familiar with the language add what the rules are for a legal identifer (what characters are allowed, can they start with a number, etc)? That should probably be included here, under Variables.

Clean Up Introduction
People have been adding random stuff to the introduction section. this should be a well polished area for new comers to quickly gain some insight into what they will be learning. perhaps a "further reading" section could be added to dump a lot of this stuff into.

Rearrange book ?
It may be just me, but I find the organization confusing. For example "Conditional and Iterator Functions" a relative sophisticated feature comes before plain "Mathematical operators". Som chapters are needlessly split up (Import/export STL) and so on.

I am also of the opinion the book should have 3 sections (possibly 3 books)
 * Tutorial - this contains the introduction, a few step-by-step examples, some description of the distribution supplied examples.
 * Reference - which is most of the current book, in particular OpenSCAD langauge, 2D/3D and DXF stuff
 * Installation (or Internals) - the chapters for the linking and adaption of OpenSCAD to platforms, external editors and so on.

Before I make a detailed suggestions, any thoughts on this? Msquare (discuss • contribs) 19:43, 15 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Msquare (discuss • contribs) 21:41, 17 November 2012 (UTC) : I moved one section - the conditional/iterator one. Done it in the print vaersion and the short reference, too.

=Old discussions (done things)=

This is better than 0%
I suggest the completion status is moved to 25%. The manual is useful and possibly even 50%. (I was looking at the recomended grading of status - Help:Development_stages) I have only really looked at chapter 4, but probabl the rest is reasonable, too. Msquare (discuss • contribs) 16:20, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

(One month later): No discussion - so I decided and have started to do it Msquare (discuss • contribs) 21:57, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Command Gloassary added
I don't see any place to add documentation of how to use the GUI viewer. For example, I figured out how to zoom the viewport in and out by trial and error, and it would be great if I could add that somewhere. (also, I see a distance variable in the viewport, but can't see a way to set it or figure out what it means)

I propose making a section called "Using the GUI" and moving the import/export stuff under it. I would do this myself, but that's a fairly large change to the organizational structure of the doc, so I'm just proposing it here.

I created a new section http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_User_Manual/Command_Glossary. The goal here being to have a consolidated list of commands and very basic syntax. I found myself hunting though the various pages to find syntax and was going to make a "cheat sheet" for myself but thought this would be better.

The Command Glossary in the OpenSCAD User Manual is totally outdated by now (03.2015). When OpenSCAD evolves the wiki gets updated, but the Command Glossary stays unchanged. The CheatSheet (http://www.openscad.org/cheatsheet/index.html) has taken the function of the Command Glossary and it does get updated regularly. I propose that we will remove the Command Glossary completely and link to the CheatSheet instead. (TakeItAndRun)

command len
I would like to add the command len to the wiki. As I have no experience with wikis I will run an account of what I want to do and what I´m doing here.

According to: https://github.com/openscad/openscad/blob/master/RELEASE_NOTES

the command len was implemented first in OpenSCAD 2011.12:

o Added len function. Takes one vector or string parameter and returns its length.

Where would be the right place to add this command? It really is not a mathematical function, but it returns a number.

OK, I´ll just put it to the mathematical funktions, maybe it has to be moved away later on.

Now, I can edit (pressing the little edit botton) an existing function, but how do I create a new one?

OK, go to the main subject heading: http://en.wikibooks.org/w/index.php?title=OpenSCAD_User_Manual/Mathematical_Functions&stable=0 and press the rider 'EDIT' in the second top most line of the (html) page. Insert '=== len ===' and some text at the alphabetical correct position ( before ln ) Then a subheading with len appears and can now be edited with the little red edit-buttom to theb right.

Now, I want to add some examples.

OK, I wrote a little example scad program and copied it and the result.

Now, how do I get the nice little box around it?

OK, starting a line with a 'space' seems to create the little box around the text.

Now I mared some changes as minor, but they actually were not. I´m sorry. (minor change should only be used for formating and simple spell checing)

Now, do I have to add the len command also in the glossary?

OK, I added it into the Command Glossary.

BUT MY, the C.C. is not at all up to date.

Enjoy

TakeItAndRun (discuss • contribs) 20:04, 6 June 2012 (UTC)