[Ccecil]

If you are a programmer OpenSCAD is likely for you. It certainly has benefits in things that are repeating patterns (gears and such)...and if your mind is good at visualizing things in "code" things will likely go a lot faster.

I personally do better with CAD software such as fusion or freecad since my mind doesn't work in the code realm since I have more of a hardware mindset. Translating the picture in my head to code is more difficult than drawing it using the standard CAD set of tools.

My opinion on OpenSCAD is that it is a very useful piece of software which many have used to make some very interesting things. If you have a background in code I recommend giving it a go. I largely view it as "the coder's CAD".

[shmeeed]

I was just about to say the same: OpenSCAD is CAD for programmers. It's very different from what's generally considered "CAD".

That's not necessarily a bad thing; there's a clientele for it, especially here on HN. But as a mechanical engineer who's used quite a few industry standard CAD systems, I'm sorry to say I wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pole.

Funnily, just a few days ago I tried FreeCAD, and found it to be better than I had expected.

[Ccecil]

I switched from Fusion to Freecad just before the 1.0 update.

Freecad 1.0 is a gamechanger IMHO. It so far has suited all my needs as well as being significantly easier to use than the pre 1.0 versions.

[ThrowawayTestr]

FreeCAD feels like blender before the UI revamp. I can tell it's powerful but the UI is opaque to me.

[cluckindan]

For functional-oriented programmers.

There is no explicit iteration, so if you want to do flexible spacing for any reason, like distribute a feature evenly along a dynamic length, you need to use recursion.