OpenSCAD Studio

A modern cross-platform OpenSCAD editor with live preview and AI copilot

⚠️ Early Alpha Software This project is in early alpha and has only been tested on macOS. Windows and Linux support is planned but not yet implemented or tested.

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✨ Motivation

As a software engineer and maker hobbyist, I love OpenSCAD. It allows for precision and maps to my mental model of building things. However, some operations (like rounding with minkowski) are not very intuitive. At work, I often use Cursor and Claude Code for writing code, and found myself plugging my OpenSCAD code into ChatGPT in order to either (1) scaffold out a starting point or (2) fix a confusing issue in my code. I also became frustrated by certain limitations of the OpenSCAD editor, like not being able to easily indent code with the editor commands I'm used to. So I built OpenSCAD Studio, which aims to be something like a Cursor for the language.

Features

• 🤖 AI copilot - Chat with Claude/GPT to generate and fix code (bring your own API key)
• 🎨 Modern editor - OpenSCAD syntax highlighting, multi-tab editing, format on save, vim mode support
• 📐 2D mode - Dedicated SVG viewer for laser cutting and engraving
• 🖼️ Live 3D preview - Interactive mesh viewer with orbit controls and content-hash caching
• 🔍 Real-time diagnostics - Inline error markers with line/column precision
• ⚙️ Customizer panel - Interactive controls for OpenSCAD parameters with auto-rendering
• 🌈 22+ themes - Popular themes like Catppuccin, Dracula, One Dark Pro, GitHub, Nord, Tokyo Night, and more

Limitations: Special operators (!, #, %, *) preview not yet implemented

📦 Installation

Prerequisites

1. The opescad cli binary must be installed and available in your PATH. You can install via package manager:

• macOS: brew install openscad
• Ubuntu: sudo apt install openscad
• Windows: Download installer from website

2. For development, you'll need:
   • Node.js 18+ and pnpm

     npm install -g pnpm

   • Rust toolchain (for building Tauri backend)

     curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh

Development

# Install dependencies
pnpm install

# Run in development mode (with hot reload)
pnpm tauri:dev

# Build for production
pnpm tauri:build

The built application will be in apps/ui/src-tauri/target/release/bundle/.

🏗️ Project Structure

openscad-studio/
├── apps/
│   ├── ui/                      # React + Vite frontend
│   │   ├── src/
│   │   │   ├── api/             # Tauri IPC wrappers
│   │   │   ├── components/      # React components
│   │   │   ├── hooks/           # Custom React hooks (useOpenScad, useAiAgent)
│   │   │   ├── stores/          # State management
│   │   │   └── themes/          # Theme definitions
│   │   └── src-tauri/           # Rust backend
│   │       ├── src/
│   │       │   ├── cmd/         # Tauri commands (render, AI tools)
│   │       │   ├── ai_agent.rs  # Native Rust AI agent
│   │       │   └── utils/       # OpenSCAD parser, caching
│   │       └── Cargo.toml
└── packages/
    └── shared/                  # Shared TypeScript types (Zod schemas)

🤖 AI Copilot Setup

The AI copilot uses a native Rust implementation with direct API integration and secure encrypted storage.

1. Open Settings (⌘,)
2. Navigate to "AI" tab
3. Enter your Anthropic / OpenAI API key
4. Key is securely stored using Tauri's encrypted store plugin

Supported Providers:

• Anthropic (Claude Sonnet 4.5, Claude Sonnet 3.5)
• OpenAI (GPT-4)

The AI can:

• View your current code and preview
• Make targeted code changes with exact string replacement
• Check for compilation errors
• All edits are validated and test-compiled before acceptance

📚 Documentation

• CLAUDE.md - Comprehensive guide for AI assistants and contributors
• AGENTS.md - AI agent architecture and tool definitions
• ROADMAP.md - Detailed development roadmap with phases

🗺️ Roadmap

• ✅ Phase 1-2 (Completed): Monaco editor, live preview, 3D viewer, export, caching
• ✅ Phase 3 (Completed): AI copilot with native Rust implementation
• 🔜 Phase 4 (Planned): Multi-file projects, testing, distribution

See ROADMAP.md for detailed breakdown.

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please:

1. Check existing issues or create a new one to discuss your idea
2. Fork the repository and create a feature branch
3. Follow the code style (rustfmt for Rust, prettier for TypeScript)
4. Update documentation as needed
5. Submit a pull request

For detailed development guidelines, see CLAUDE.md.

📄 License

MIT License - see LICENSE for details.

🙏 Acknowledgments

Built with:

• Tauri - Rust-powered desktop framework
• React - UI framework
• Monaco Editor - Code editor
• Three.js - 3D rendering
• OpenSCAD - The amazing CSG tool this editor is built for

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Made with ❤️ for the OpenSCAD community