{"id":20004,"date":"2025-12-20T12:25:51","date_gmt":"2025-12-20T17:25:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/?p=20004"},"modified":"2025-12-20T12:55:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-20T17:55:13","slug":"openscad-is-kinda-neat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/2025\/12\/20\/openscad-is-kinda-neat\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenSCAD Is Kinda Neat"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Designing a simple battery holder in OpenSCAD.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Earlier this year I designed a very basic box\/organizer for AA<\/a> and AAA<\/a> batteries in Autodesk Fusion<\/a>, making it parameterized so that by changing a few variables one could adjust the battery type\/size, rows\/columns, etc. This worked well, and after uploading it to Printables earlier today<\/a> I realized that reimplementing it would probably be a good way to learn the basics of OpenSCAD<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

OpenSCAD is a rather different type of CAD tool, one in which you write code to generate objects. Because my battery holder is very simple (just a box with a pattern of cutouts) and uses input parameters, I figured it’d be a good intro to a new language \/ tool. And in the future might even be better than firing up Fusion for such simple designs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After going through part of the tutorial<\/a> and an hour or so of poking, here’s the result: battery_holder_generator.scad<\/code><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n

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Slicer showing the Fusion model on top and OpenSCAD on bottom.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

By changing just a few variables — numRows<\/code> and numColumns<\/code> and batteryType<\/code> — one can render a customized battery holder which can then be plopped into a slicer<\/a> and printed. No heavy\/expensive CAD software needed and the output is effectively the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Without comments or informative output, this is the meat of the code:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AA = 15;\nAAA = 11;\nheightCompartment = 19;\nthicknessWall = 1;\nnumRows = 4;\nnumColumns = 10;\nbatteryType = AA;\n\nwidthBox = (numRows * batteryType) + ((numRows + 1) * thicknessWall);\nlengthBox = (numColumns * batteryType) + ((numColumns + 1) * thicknessWall);\ndepthBox = heightCompartment + thicknessWall;\n\ndifference() {\n    cube([lengthBox, widthBox, depthBox]);\n    for (c = [ 1 : numColumns ])\n        for (r = [ 1 : numRows ])\n            let (\n                startColumn = ((c * thicknessWall) + ((c - 1) * batteryType)),\n                startRow = ((r * thicknessWall) + ((r - 1) * batteryType))\n            )\n            {\n                translate([startColumn, startRow, thicknessWall])\n                cube([batteryType, batteryType, heightCompartment + 1]);\n            }\n};<\/code><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
Simply, it draws a box and cuts out the holes. (The first cube()<\/code> draws the main box, then difference()<\/code> subtracts the battery holes via the second cube()<\/code> as their quantity and location (via translate()<\/code>) is iterated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That’s it. Pretty neat, eh?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(One part that confused me is how I needed to use let()<\/a><\/code> to define startColumn<\/code> and startRow<\/code> inside the loop. I don’t understand this…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While this probably won’t be very helpful for more complicated designs, I can see this being super useful for bearing drifts, spacers, and other similar simple (yet incredibly useful in real life) geometric shapes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Earlier this year I designed a very basic box\/organizer for AA and AAA batteries in Autodesk Fusion, making it parameterized so that by changing a…<\/p>\n
Continue readingOpenSCAD Is Kinda Neat<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20004","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-making-things","entry"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20004"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20015,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20004\/revisions\/20015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20004"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20004"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nuxx.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20004"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}