Greetings all, my first post.

I use OpenSCAD to create assemblies from 3D printed PLA plastic,
off-the-shelf steel screws, pipes, plates (see images). The basic idea is to
print everything in plastic, but design so they are ready for CNC, mold,
punch-press. The aluminum extrusion in the bottom image is one example,
printed in white plastic now but ready to be replaced with the real thing.

These are reference designs and I script everything with ASTM standard
values - then I fine-tune the model both in OpenSCAD and in Cura during
slicing, to make them fit together. A lot of parts are not standard - Nylon
6/6 hex heads come in all sizes, and even when they are standard - 1/2 inch
PVC pipe and a 1/2 inch metal conduit are not the same inner and outer dia.

While the ASMT values (the actual CAD data) must be preserved, the tweaked
values also must be preserved as I need to reprint damaged and broken parts.

Question: If this is familiar to you - how do you deal with all these
complexities?

OpenSCAD and 3D printing is something I started doing recently, and I have
some basic skills but I never really had to deal with revision control. I am
thinking to use git - but no idea if that's the right tool, or even if I
need it for this.

All I did so far is experiments. I love OpenSCAD, I think I understand
"parametric" design, and I was able to build some sophisticated stuff very
close to the way I expected them to work. But I need to find a way to deal
with those complexities.

Thanks for any feedback!
(If this is off-topic I apologize).
http://forum.openscad.org/file/t3101/FourOh-LUG-Banner_%281%29.jpg
http://forum.openscad.org/file/t3101/InitRails_%281%29.jpg

Cheers!
Mr. Sandor Kunyik
Founder, Technology Evangelist
Factory 4.0 Open Initiative, LLC.
https://hubzilla.factoryfouroh.net/channel/fouroh-llc

Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/

One issue I did not include to keep my post brief:

The dovetails are central to most of what I do, and they are CNC candidates.
I print them on Ender 5 with the build plate lowering (vertical), and the
dimensions are going to differ from the CAD data one particular way.. when I
print them horizontal the dimensions and the deviation from CAD data going
to differ another way.

1.) Deployment: To give the printed plastic the best chance of survival (so
it wont peel to pieces during testing), the dovetail should be printed
according to deployment - surface, wall and ceiling mount - so the dovetail
angle changes. This is by the way going to be the same in steel, a dovetail
mounted horizontal is different from the one mounted to the ceiling.

2.) Print: to allow the dovetail to work, the layers must be aligned -
mating surfaces with creases from the layers are sticking and noisy, but
after sanding them smooth the dimension also changes.

I have a really difficult time to find and use the same values, with the
same deployment and print parameters on top of all the other complexities.
Its something I need to share with others so I am working on this, and this
post is just to share more details,.

Thanks for the responses.

Cheers!
Mr. Sandor Kunyik
Founder, Technology Evangelist
Factory 4.0 Open Initiative, LLC.
https://hubzilla.factoryfouroh.net/channel/fouroh-llc

Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/

It seems to me that you have two largely-orthogonal problems.

First, revisions.  You made a design yesterday.  You want to update it
today, but you want to keep track of the changes so that you can back
them out if they don't work, or so you can remember what you tried (and
discarded) yesterday.  That's what source management tools like git are
for.  They will mostly just work, though you might want to find a slicer
that likes to keep its "projects" in a textual form.  (I don't know if
any do.)  Source management tools can often deal with binary files, but
usually poorly.

Second, variations.  You have two parts that are based on the same
model, but differ in some way.  It isn't that one is newer than the
other... they're just different.  There I would think in terms of
parametric design - writing one program that will generate both results,
when fed different inputs.  One good trick for that is the Customizer;
you can have one OpenSCAD program and several JSON sets of values to
drive it.  (You can do the same thing in pure OpenSCAD using inclusion,
but it's a bit more awkward.)

At this point I am thinking of the people who are going to inherit my
designs, and the responsibilities that comes with advancing them.

I am seriously considering a wiki, where each page going to show the picture
of the part (or the animation of the assembly) to make it clearly
recognizable, then just post the entire OpenSCAD script and link the STL or
STEP or whatever to build it. To me this looks really appealing. The text in
the wiki would keep the whole thing updated. Versions and variations would
be separate wiki pages.

Until of course a real pro comes along pointing out the obvious, the effort
it would take to place the whole thing under version control done right.
Then I am going to kick myself for not doing the right thing and learn to do
it the right way when I still had a blank slate.

Now as I am writing this, management and ownership also going to prefer wiki
pages with some rich media to text-only version control.

Just brainstorming here.

Cheers!
Mr. Sandor Kunyik
Founder, Technology Evangelist
Factory 4.0 Open Initiative, LLC.
https://hubzilla.factoryfouroh.net/channel/fouroh-llc

Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/

Look at github.  They have wiki, source control, issue tracking, et
cetera.  Users can fork their own copies and develop on them, then feed
back to you for merging.

Gitea on YunoHost it is then. I suspected git was the candidate, but now
git+wiki+fork+unlimited accounts on self-hosting do make more sense, thanks!

Cheers!
Mr. Sandor Kunyik
Founder, Technology Evangelist
Factory 4.0 Open Initiative, LLC.
https://hubzilla.factoryfouroh.net/channel/fouroh-llc

Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/