JS
Jon S
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 2:02 AM
Hi all,
Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get answers.
Thanks, JonS
Hi all,
Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get answers.
Thanks, JonS
WF
William F. Adams
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 2:16 AM
On Tuesday, October 13, 2026 at 10:02:16 PM EDT, OpenSCAD general discussion Mailing-list discuss@lists.openscad.org wrote:
Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get answers.
I would be very surprised if these were actual problems with the application (there are a lot of Windows users).
More likely, it's a problem with your code --- could you share that here?
Also, it may help to review the documentation:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_Tutorial
William
-- Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.https://designinto3d.com/
On Tuesday, October 13, 2026 at 10:02:16 PM EDT, OpenSCAD general discussion Mailing-list <discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get answers.
I would be very surprised if these were actual problems with the application (there are a lot of Windows users).
More likely, it's a problem with your code --- could you share that here?
Also, it may help to review the documentation:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_Tutorial
William
-- Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.https://designinto3d.com/
JB
Jordan Brown
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 2:32 AM
On 10/13/2026 7:02 PM, Jon S via Discuss wrote:
Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are
listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the
direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get
answers.
You say "importing" .scad modules, but... OpenSCAD has no import
operation that is applicable to .scad files.
For the language constructs, it has "include" and "use".
For all purposes (as far as we know), OpenSCAD accepts either forward
slashes (/) or backslashes ().
However, note that if you are using the file path in an OpenSCAD string
- as, for instance, in an import() operation - like many languages,
backslashes are magic and if you want to use a backslash you must double it.
For instance: import("myfolder\mydrawing.svg");
That requirement does not apply to "include" or "use", because their
arguments are not OpenSCAD strings.
On 10/13/2026 7:02 PM, Jon S via Discuss wrote:
>
> Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are
> listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the
> direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get
> answers.
>
You say "importing" .scad modules, but... OpenSCAD has no import
operation that is applicable to .scad files.
For the language constructs, it has "include" and "use".
For all purposes (as far as we know), OpenSCAD accepts either forward
slashes (/) or backslashes (\).
However, note that if you are using the file path in an OpenSCAD string
- as, for instance, in an import() operation - like many languages,
backslashes are magic and if you want to use a backslash you must double it.
For instance: import("myfolder\\mydrawing.svg");
That requirement does *not* apply to "include" or "use", because their
arguments are not OpenSCAD strings.
JB
Jordan Brown
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 2:49 AM
On 10/13/2026 7:32 PM, Jordan Brown via Discuss wrote:
However, note that if you are using the file path in an OpenSCAD
string - as, for instance, in an import() operation - like many
languages, backslashes are magic and if you want to use a backslash
you must double it.
As a result, it's usually simpler to use forward slashes on all
platforms, including Windows. As a side benefit, if the paths are
relative it makes the OpenSCAD program be portable between platforms.
On 10/13/2026 7:32 PM, Jordan Brown via Discuss wrote:
> However, note that if you are using the file path in an OpenSCAD
> string - as, for instance, in an import() operation - like many
> languages, backslashes are magic and if you want to use a backslash
> you must double it.
As a result, it's usually simpler to use forward slashes on all
platforms, including Windows. As a side benefit, if the paths are
relative it makes the OpenSCAD program be portable between platforms.
RV
Roel Vanhout
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 6:03 AM
I don't know what symptoms you're seeing, but I ran into an issue a
few weeks ago where mixing forward and backward slashes caused a crash
of OpenSCAD. But, this could not be reliably reproduced in isolation,
even though it happened enough in my automatic testing that it became
very annoying. In the end, the crash could be reliably triggered using
a network or UNC path. The issue is a regression stemming from
switching from Boost's filesystem implementation to std::filesystem;
MingW/gcc didn't have proper support for UNC paths (still doesn't
afaict). I submitted a patch 2nd of September (
https://github.com/openscad/openscad/pull/7004 ). I still don't know
why the mixing of forward and backward slashes would sometimes trigger
this same issue, but I do know that I haven't seen a crash since.
cheers
Roel
On Wed, Oct 14, 2026 at 4:02 AM Jon S via Discuss
discuss@lists.openscad.org wrote:
Hi all,
Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get answers.
Thanks, JonS
OpenSCAD mailing list
To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
I don't know what symptoms you're seeing, but I ran into an issue a
few weeks ago where mixing forward and backward slashes caused a crash
of OpenSCAD. But, this could not be reliably reproduced in isolation,
even though it happened enough in my automatic testing that it became
very annoying. In the end, the crash could be reliably triggered using
a network or UNC path. The issue is a regression stemming from
switching from Boost's filesystem implementation to std::filesystem;
MingW/gcc didn't have proper support for UNC paths (still doesn't
afaict). I submitted a patch 2nd of September (
https://github.com/openscad/openscad/pull/7004 ). I still don't know
why the mixing of forward and backward slashes would sometimes trigger
this same issue, but I do know that I haven't seen a crash since.
cheers
Roel
On Wed, Oct 14, 2026 at 4:02 AM Jon S via Discuss
<discuss@lists.openscad.org> wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
> Is there a page where “problems occur in Windows with OpenSCAD” are listed? The current difficulty is importing .scad modules and the direction of the slash marks. Please point me to where I might get answers.
>
> Thanks, JonS
>
> _______________________________________________
> OpenSCAD mailing list
> To unsubscribe send an email to discuss-leave@lists.openscad.org
JB
Jordan Brown
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 3:20 PM
On 10/13/2026 11:03 PM, Roel Vanhout via Discuss wrote:
I don't know what symptoms you're seeing, but I ran into an issue a
few weeks ago where mixing forward and backward slashes caused a crash
of OpenSCAD. But, this could not be reliably reproduced in isolation,
even though it happened enough in my automatic testing that it became
very annoying. In the end, the crash could be reliably triggered using
a network or UNC path. The issue is a regression stemming from
switching from Boost's filesystem implementation to std::filesystem;
MingW/gcc didn't have proper support for UNC paths (still doesn't
afaict). I submitted a patch 2nd of September (
https://github.com/openscad/openscad/pull/7004 ). I still don't know
why the mixing of forward and backward slashes would sometimes trigger
this same issue, but I do know that I haven't seen a crash since.
When you say "a crash", do you mean an erroneous error - that is, an
error that should not have occurred - or do you mean that the operating
system terminated the application - what UNIX would call a core dump?
On 10/13/2026 11:03 PM, Roel Vanhout via Discuss wrote:
> I don't know what symptoms you're seeing, but I ran into an issue a
> few weeks ago where mixing forward and backward slashes caused a crash
> of OpenSCAD. But, this could not be reliably reproduced in isolation,
> even though it happened enough in my automatic testing that it became
> very annoying. In the end, the crash could be reliably triggered using
> a network or UNC path. The issue is a regression stemming from
> switching from Boost's filesystem implementation to std::filesystem;
> MingW/gcc didn't have proper support for UNC paths (still doesn't
> afaict). I submitted a patch 2nd of September (
> https://github.com/openscad/openscad/pull/7004 ). I still don't know
> why the mixing of forward and backward slashes would sometimes trigger
> this same issue, but I do know that I haven't seen a crash since.
When you say "a crash", do you mean an erroneous error - that is, an
error that should not have occurred - or do you mean that the operating
system terminated the application - what UNIX would call a core dump?
RV
Roel Vanhout
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 4:37 PM
When you say "a crash", do you mean an erroneous error - that is, an error
that should not have occurred - or do you mean that the operating system
terminated the application - what UNIX would call a core dump?
Yes a true crash in the technical sense of the word. I mean, at least it
give me a dialog with some nondescript error message like 'illegal
exception' or 'unknown error' or something - I don't remember the text, but
it only had an 'ok' button and upon clicking that the program terminated.
On Wed, Oct 14, 2026, 17:20 Jordan Brown <openscad@jordan.maileater.net>
wrote:
>
> When you say "a crash", do you mean an erroneous error - that is, an error
> that should not have occurred - or do you mean that the operating system
> terminated the application - what UNIX would call a core dump?
>
Yes a true crash in the technical sense of the word. I mean, at least it
give me a dialog with some nondescript error message like 'illegal
exception' or 'unknown error' or something - I don't remember the text, but
it only had an 'ok' button and upon clicking that the program terminated.
JB
Jordan Brown
Wed, Oct 14, 2026 4:47 PM
On 10/14/2026 9:37 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:
On Wed, Oct 14, 2026, 17:20 Jordan Brown
openscad@jordan.maileater.net wrote:
When you say "a crash", do you mean an erroneous error - that is,
an error that should not have occurred - or do you mean that the
operating system terminated the application - what UNIX would call
a core dump?
Yes a true crash in the technical sense of the word. I mean, at least
it give me a dialog with some nondescript error message like 'illegal
exception' or 'unknown error' or something - I don't remember the
text, but it only had an 'ok' button and upon clicking that the
program terminated.
Huh. Thanks. I know that there are problems in the vicinity of UNC
paths (and, for that matter, paths that specify drive names), but I'm
surprised by an actual crash.
On 10/14/2026 9:37 AM, Roel Vanhout wrote:
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2026, 17:20 Jordan Brown
> <openscad@jordan.maileater.net> wrote:
>
>
> When you say "a crash", do you mean an erroneous error - that is,
> an error that should not have occurred - or do you mean that the
> operating system terminated the application - what UNIX would call
> a core dump?
>
>
> Yes a true crash in the technical sense of the word. I mean, at least
> it give me a dialog with some nondescript error message like 'illegal
> exception' or 'unknown error' or something - I don't remember the
> text, but it only had an 'ok' button and upon clicking that the
> program terminated.
>
Huh. Thanks. I know that there are problems in the vicinity of UNC
paths (and, for that matter, paths that specify drive names), but I'm
surprised by an actual crash.
