// Roundup //

Last week we sent our rings away to Shapeways, the final prints should arrive within two weeks and we will be presenting them then.  For today’s Class Challenge, everyone was supposed to bring in a broken/inadequate household object for the class to fix.

// Today: Class Challenge: Fix It! //

• Class Discussion: Everyone should present the object they brought in.  What’s wrong with it, do you have any ideas about how to fix it, etc..  We will be picking objects in groups of two to fix during class time.
• Use whatever program you prefer and feel free to steal parts from other peoples’ designs (e.g. from Thingiverse), but do not just steal designs wholesale, adapt them to your own uses!

// Next Program: OpenSCAD //

• Start by downloading a free copy of OpenSCAD.
  You should also bookmark the very useful OpenSCAD User Manual and OpenSCAD Cheat Sheet. The best way to learn code is by example, and the OpenSCAD user manual includes example code for all its commands and operations. The fastest way to find reference information is just to Google it; for example, searching for “OpenSCAD for loop” will get you pretty quickly to the documentation page you need for reference.
• Your assignment for next week is to go through this OpenSCAD Tutorial Code written by former JMU 3SPACE student Tony Mannino. Tony’s tutorial code will help you learn how to create basic OpenSCAD objects, how to modify those basic objects, and even how to combine objects and create code loops.  The way to use this tutorial code is to download it, open it in OpenSCAD, and then start un-commenting pieces of code to see what they do.
• More precisly, to use this tutorial, try un-commenting some code to make it active, then press “F5” (or “Function-F5” on some smaller or laptop keyboards) to see the result of the code in the graphics window. “Commented” code is ignored by the compiler, so only uncommented code will be run and displayed.  So how do you un-comment something?  Comments in OpenSCAD can appear two different ways: First, anything preceded by the double-slash “//” will be ignored. For example, to see what the piece of code below does in OpenSCAD, you would erase the comment symbol “//” at the start of the line in the OpenSCAD Tutorial Code file, and then compile the code with “F5”. The result should be a sphere of radius 10mm. If you want to make the sphere go away again, then just put the comment symbol back in.