Skip to content

Getting started with Python-powered OpenSCAD

Enabling Python support

For Python support to be enabled, 2 conditions must be met:

  1. The python-engine feature must be enabled Enabling the python engine
  2. The extension of the file you're editing MUST be .py.

If both those condition are met, then the file will be interpreted as a Python file.

Differences with regular OpenSCAD

If you're familiar with regular OpenSCAD, then the synthax will be fairly obvious, as the names of functions and classes are the same.

The major difference is that you need to use the output() function for a shape to be displayed, as opposed to it being displayed automatically in regular OpenSCAD. As for every python library, you need to import the functions with 'inport'. Put this in the beginning of each script.

Creating a basic shape

Lets create a 5x5x5 cube.

# getting openscad functions into namespace
from openscad import *

# Create the cube object, and store it in variable "c"
c = cube(5)
# Or, more explicitely
c = cube([5,5,5])

# Display the cube
output(c)

// Create the cube object
cube(5);
// Or, more explicitely
cube([5,5,5]);

// The cube is displayed implicitely

That was pretty easy! Next, let's see how to combine multiple shapes.