As we are now in the middle of the GSoD timeline, here's
an update of what happened so far.

We decided that the final place for the tutorial will
be also on Wikibooks, some initial pages are places there
to register the book name, but it's not the latest state
of documentation.
(https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenSCAD_Tutorial)

For now the ongoing work can be found on our file server
as PDF files per chapter:

http://files.openscad.org/tutorial/

If you have some time to spare, please have a look and
provide feedback on what's good and/or what should be
improved. Also examples that could be used for later
chapters could be very helpful.

ciao,
Torsten.

This is very interesting.

The first thing that occurred to me is a question I have posed in this Forum
before - who is the "customer?" or, "what sort of user is OpenSCAD trying to
attract?" And "what is the purpose of using OpenSCAD?" or "why would one
want to use OpenSCAD?"

I think it would actually be useful to have an introductory chapter that
sets these things out clearly because doing so will {A} give the author(s)
focus and {B} forestall comments that are unrelated to the purpose of the
tutorial and {C} give the reader the information to decide whether or not to
read the Tutorial.

I hope the aim is to attract anyone who is looking for a convenient way to
create a 3D model (most likely for 3D printing) using a program that has a
fairly easy learning curve.

The next thing that occurred to me is how the content of the tutorial seems
a million miles away from the discussion in many (most?) of the Threads on
this Forum - they tend to be about very esoteric problems in OpenSCAD, far
beyond the scope of a beginner.

As far as the content is concerned, I wonder if there is rather too much of
the "follow along". I suspect it may be challenging the reader's attention
span, especially with the modern tendency to expect everything in a
sound-bite. That might be alleviated with an index and a style that allows
the reader to skip to the parts that interest him or her. However that would
require that a person could start at (say) Chapter 4 without needing to have
created his Chapter 4 starting point by working through all the stuff in the
earlier chapters. Perhaps there could be a simple way to download all the
script that would be needed at the start of Chapter 4. (By the way I just
mention Chapter 4 at random for illustration).

Finally (for now) if (as I hope) the aim is to attract users from all walks
of life and not just those with prior programming experience I believe some
effort should be put into creating an easy to use GUI front end for
OpenSCAD. I gave some details of my own attempt to do so (ClikScad) in a
recent Forum Thread. I am not claiming any greatness for my own attempt  but
I hope it may provide a basis for discussion about the idea of a GUI.

...R

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Why has my Reply on this Topic appeared under some other user's name?

I strongly object to this in principle.

And from a practical point of view it means I cannot make a necessary edit
to my text.

...Robin2

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This is a test to see if this Post is correctly attributed to me

...Robin2

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Some comments on the proposed Tutorial ...

This is very interesting.

The first thing that occurred to me is a question I have posed in this Forum
before - who is the "customer?" or, "what sort of user is OpenSCAD trying to
attract?" And "what is the purpose of using OpenSCAD?" or "why would one
want to use OpenSCAD?"

I think it would actually be useful to have an introductory chapter that
sets these things out clearly because doing so will {A} give the author(s)
focus and {B} forestall comments that are unrelated to the purpose of the
tutorial and {C} give the reader the information to decide whether or not to
read the Tutorial.

I hope the aim is to attract anyone who is looking for a convenient way to
create a 3D model (most likely for 3D printing) using a program that has a
fairly easy learning curve.

The next thing that occurred to me is how the content of the tutorial seems
a million miles away from the discussion in many (most?) of the Threads on
this Forum - they tend to be about very esoteric problems in OpenSCAD, far
beyond the scope of a beginner. However this is not a criticism of the
Tutorial - I believe it should be aimed at beginners.

As far as the content is concerned, I wonder if there is rather too much of
the "follow along". I suspect it may be challenging the reader's attention
span, especially with the modern tendency to expect everything in a
sound-bite. That might be alleviated with an index and a style that allows
the reader to skip to the parts that interest him or her. However that would
require that a person could start at (say) Chapter 4 without needing to have
created his Chapter 4 starting point by working through all the stuff in the
earlier chapters. Perhaps there could be a simple way to download all the
script that would be needed at the start of Chapter 4. (By the way I just
mention Chapter 4 at random for illustration).

Finally (for now) if (as I hope) the aim is to attract users from all walks
of life and not just those with prior programming experience I believe some
effort should be put into creating an easy to use GUI front end for
OpenSCAD. I gave some details of my own attempt to do so (ClikScad) in a
recent Forum Thread. I am not claiming any greatness for my own attempt  but
I hope it may provide a basis for discussion about the idea of a GUI.

...Robin2

--
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Thorsten,

the screen shots seem to use orthogonal view. Isn't that a bit
counterintuitive? If it is intended, then it might be a good idea, to
mention at least the other view. I have noticed that in the user manual both
views are used for screen shots.

Personally I use this view only in special situations, e.g. together with
axes alignment (Top, Bottom ...). Therefore I wonder if someone would use it
deliberatly in 3D model development.

• Rudolf -

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