Following along the examples from the book
Migrating to SolidPython
- From chapter 16 (Rotate extrude) of the book, I decided to pickup the SolidPython library to do the exercises.
- When translating the examples to SolidPython, I've realized an "oversight" of learning OpenScad through the book whilst using the author's own OpenScad translation library.
- The author's library provides a lot of shortcuts and conveniences which is great to get started but detracts you to "get" the process and design flow of OpenScad.
- SolidPython's approach follows closely the OpenScad thinking and provides little conveniences. This gave me a moment of disconnect.
- The first 4 steps of this Instructible, set me in the right direction and I was able to convert the examples in the book so far.
- I plan to continue through the examples in the book and maybe get around finishing the Instructible as well.
Following along the code samples
- I'm using the Kindle version of the book and unfortunately the code samples are in image form so you'll really have to type stuff in yourself. I find that this may be a good thing for learning.
- The author have created a lot of convenience objects that builts on top of the basic OpenScad objects (i.e. triangle, regular_polygon, etc.). I've translated some of them to SolidPython.
- The author likes to put a lot of the normal OpenScad function under a
linear_extrudefunction and this tripped me off as I was translating to SolidPython. If the examples are not the same as what you are producing, check the author's "reimplementation" in his library.
External resources
- One annoying thing is that the author will leave you to search the internet for the libraries he uses (both his custom translation lib and the the OpenScad libs). I was able to find these and am including them in this repo for reference. I wish he would've uploaded the libs on github or somewhere easily accessible like any decent tech author would do.