CAD For Programmers

I'm a back-end programmer. I deal with databases and servers, and I think a terminal window is a perfectly reasonable interface. And my normal creativity outlets are writing and, yes, programming.

As you might imagine then, CAD programs fill me with dread. They seem so cool! And yet, I spend vastly more time learning how to do basic stuff in them then I ever spend doing said stuff. I keep thinking, "Can't I just write a program to do this?"

And the answer, it turns out, is yes. If you use OpenSCAD. I learned about it from Make magazine's special issue on 3D printers (a topic I'm this close to really digging into). While a real CAD user may find it limiting, someone like me, who works in programming languages and usually has no design more complex than a mechanical puzzle piece, it's perfect. You -- get this! -- just write a program to do all the work you need! You refactor with variables, functions, and macros, and you provide instructions through a declarative programming language.

Finally, a CAD tool that works the way I do.