[ur-whale]

> The biggest problem with openSCAD for me is that there's no way to "measure" in the preview window

I agree, except for the fact that I would go one step further.

OpenSCAD would be amazing if it would let you "interrogate" a piece of geometry returned by a module, something along the lines of:

     - get the AABB of the model
     - cast a ray onto the  odel and get a sorted list of intersections
     - intersect two pieces of geometry and get a polyline out of it

and use the result of these "introspections" as parameters for subsequent manipulation/modification of the object.

If OpenSCAD could do this, it'd be simply amazing.

But I suspect it's hard to do in the current way it's implemented: what I am describing kind of breaks the current OpenSCAD paradigm because it would force injection of data coming from the "geometry stream" into the control parameters of downstream processing nodes.

I don't think the engine is designed to handle this well.

[phkahler]

You might try exporting objects as STL and then link them in Solvespace. Edge builds do support binary STL files and it will identify edge vertices for building additional geometry.

[ur-whale]

Yeah, but then you're not in OpenSCAD anymore, and any subsequent building step has to happen in solvespace, which while it is a nice package, does not have the flexibility of openscad.