OpenSCAD Project Template

Template

The file provides a template to create a new project. It contains some basic functions & modules you would like to use in nearly any project. To not every time start from scratch with a new .scad-file, you can instead take this template and start immediately.

Versions

• v2 — 5.9.2026, first release here on printables

• v3 — 6.9.2026, improved script, added two demo-imports

Features

The script provides following features which should ease your construction/modeling process a lot and provides convenience for several things which turned out to be nice to have.

• Store project name and version together with the license and units you use

• Several boolean flags allow to switch on and off certain features like e.g:

  • USE_DEBUG to show detailed rendering parameters and a custom commandline call to render high quality model images.

  • USE_LOG lets you turn on/off log output via echo() commands which are scattered throughout the template.

  • USE_IDENTIFY will switch all color-statements to identification colors, so you can easily find the component you are working on right now. When switched off, the components take their component colors as defined.

  • KEEP_CAMERA lets you freely rotate and change the view(port) and watch at the model from all sides. If you turn it off, it will snap to the default camera configuration which you could manually define what it should be.

• Several export flags and parameters allow to manipulate the model exclusively for exporting it to an STL file. You can e.g. apply custom rotation to all 3 axis to have a perfectly placed model orientation for printing by just flipping the USE_DEPLOY switch to ON.

• Quickly change the key rendering variables $fa, $fs and $fn with an easy to use slider and menu.

• Pick which component you want to display, you can choose between 3 pre-configured component sections and switch them ON and OFF with the flags USE_A, USE_B and USE_C.

• Change the aspects of a component in the corresponding customizer section. Use sliders, drop-down-menus etc. to choose values and parameters.

• Examples for BOSL2 library are shown in the Component C. Please follow instructions on the top of the script to install the BOSL2 library.

Rendering

To get the best results for exported images in high quality, just flip the switch to USE_DEBUG and then copy the command-line call from the ECHO-output printed to the output window.

This will look like something like this:

openscad openscad_template_v2.scad -p openscad_template_v2.json -P 'default' --imgsize=1024,1024 -D USE_IDENTIFY='false' -D QFN='600' --projection=p --camera=3.8,70,-0.2,52,0,47,610 --colorscheme Metallic --view axes,scales,crosshairs -o openscad_template_v2_hq_rendering.png


History

The file is an evolutionary result of the first 1.5 years of my life in 3D modelling and -printing. Every feature in there turned out to be something I needed again and again for each project.

Customizer is a well hidden powertool

I started to make heavy use of the customizer and define certain sections I would always want to use. The customizer supports a lot of convenience just by adding the right comments next to variables. You can easily pick options from a drop-down, or move a slider for a range of values, or just flip a boolean switch, all structured with sections.

So the template provides following sections, which i marked with colorful emoji dots to improve orientation:

1. PROJECT
   provides basic settings for this project

2. DEBUG
   lets you flip the switch on several flags

3. EXPORT
   allows to apply special rotations only for export mode

4. RENDERING
   allows to interactively choose a rendering quality

5. COMPONENTS
   switch visibility of a component quickly ON/OFF

6. COMPONENT A, B, C, ...
   collect all modifiers for this component, e.g. dimensions, color, color used for holes, etc.

Pro-Tipp: Switch the customizer to only display Description Only, this way you do not wast valuable display space to the variable names used for the options listed.

Also modify the default values for the variables used in the customizer to fit your needs. All modifications to the customizer are usually only saved as a Customizer Set which basically is stored as a .json file separately. If you want a specific configuration to be available, create a set to save the customizer-setup. i always create a default set for myself.

I prefer also to give every variable in the customizer a proper description because this avoids clutter and renaming the variable does not impact the visual impression.

All colors are beautiful & helpful

One example ist the color_id() function, which allows you to decide which of two colors should be used for a component to be rendered. It is superuseful to give every part of your model a different color while designing. This way you can easily identify the part. But for the final result you want ONE other specific component color. I needed this especially for models which consist of more than just two components. Just flip the switch on USE_IDENTIFY and you can easily spot the part you work on right now.

Keeping correct perspective at any time

Another annoyance I had to deal with was the fact, that OpenSCAD always starts with a default camera view that seldomly is what you want or expect when you open a model. To fix this, I added the KEEP_CAMERA flag, that will restore the camera setup you store as a default in CAMERA_ROTATION, CAMERA_TRANSLATION, CAMERA_DISTANCE and CAMERA_FOCUS.

Those values are always displayed at the bottom of the OpenSCAD window but also if you have USE_DEBUG on in the log output. The KEEP_CAMERA flag might be a bit misleading in a way, that when it is ON it keeps the most recent perspective you chose (OpenSCAD otherwise always snaps back to the default when rerendering a scene). So to restore your once in those values SAVED default camera perspective, you need to once flip the switch to OFF and then back to ON. This is necessary also directly after you opened the file once to restore the stored camera perspective.

To be continued...