Inkscape to OpenSCAD

I was trying to figure out how to get a bit beyond cubes and cylinders in OpenSCAD and found an Inkscape extension to save your paths as a .scad file. May be useful to others. Here it is!

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Yes I found that useful when I had to make a device that incorporated a scalpel blade. I scanned the blade on a flat bed scanner and then traced the outline in InkScad to get a vector. I then exported it to OpenSCAD and linear extruded it to make it 3D. I then had an accurate 3D model of the blade.

In general though I design everything I 3D print or 2D mill entirely in OpenSCAD.

Note that you can design directly in 2D with OpenSCAD using square, circle, polygon and text. You can also convert from 3D to 2D with projection and from 2D to 3D with linear_extrude or rotate_extrude.

To get nice rounded shapes you can make them with circle and hull() or you can use offset() to round a square shape. For example offset(3) offset(-3) shape() will round all the convex corners of shape with a radius of 3. offset(-3) offset(3) shape() will round the concave corners.

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Coooool

Neat. I’ve always used a DXF export and then just imported and extruded, but this is probably less opaque.

(And of course if you’re into chamfers, offset can do that for you as well)

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