Title: Port of the week: OpenSCAD
       Author: Solène
       Date: 04 July 2016
       Tags: portoftheweek
       Description: 
       
       OpenSCAD is a software for creating 3D objects like a programming
       language, with the possibility to preview your creation.
       
       I am personaly interested in 3D things, I have been playing with 3ds
       Max and Blender for creating 3d objects but I never felt really
       comfortable with them. I discovered pov-ray a few years ago which is
       used to create rendered pictures instead of creating objects. Pov-ray
       use its own "programming language" to describe the scene and make the
       render. Now, I have a 3D printer and I would like to create things to
       print, but I don't like the GUI stuff of Blender and Pov-ray don't
       create objects, so... OpenSCAD ! This is the pov-ray of objects !
       
       Here is a simple example that create an empty box (difference of 2
       cubes) and a screw propeller:
       
           height = 3;
           depth = 6;
           thickness = 0.2;
       
               cube( [width,depth,height], true);
       
               cube( [width-thickness, depth-thickness, height], true);
           }
       
               linear_extrude(twist = 400, height = height*2)
                   square(2,true);
       
       The following picture is made from the code above:
       
        ![openscad][] 
       
        files. scad-mode will check the coloration/syntax and scad-preview
        will create the OpenScad render inside a Emacs pane. Personaly, I use
        OpenSCAD opened in some corner of the screen with option set to
        render on file change, and I edit with emacs. Of course you can use
        any editor, or the embedded editor which is a Scintilla one which is
        pretty usable.
       
       [OpenSCAD website](http://www.openscad.org/index.html)
       
       [OpenSCAD gallery](http://www.openscad.org/gallery.html)
       
       [openscad]: static/openscad-rendu.png "Openscad render picture"