Comment by nullc
6 months ago
I used OpenSCAD a long time ago because it felt very natural having spent a lot of time with POVray as a teen.
But I found it to be very difficult to design parts with specific dimensions that were needed to line up with objects in the real world.
In FreeCAD (/Solidworks/Onshape/solvespace/etc.) it's easy to just create a logical sketch of your part, fix the require dimensions, angles, symmetries, etc and it solves for the geometry.
Similar situation here, ex POVray. After years of managing ME's on Solidworks, I still prefer OpenSCAD to anything else because it's cross-platform, small, always available, and frequently modeling a single part in isolation or a small number of parts in proximity is adequate to solve a problem. It really doesn't scale to complex projects yet. No measurement tools, no drawing tools are the kickers. Animation is meh, better to go to Blender for anything nontrivial. Intrigued by but haven't really given a fair go to SolveSpace. https://solvespace.com/