I haven't tried fogleman/sdf, but you are implying that mesh export is really slow in that program?

If so, you might consider trying my SDF modelling software, which is similar to fogleman's.
https://github.com/curv3d/curv
Mesh export to STL or OBJ is quite fast. I usually can export a few million triangles in a few seconds. This is due to optimization: the model is JIT compiled to optimized machine code, and mesh generation is multithreaded, so the more cores the better. I'm expecting another order of magnitude speedup once I figure out how to generate the mesh using a GPU.

On Fri, Nov 12, 2021, at 11:03 PM, Paul Haeberli wrote:

Presuming you want the full render (F6), No.

CGAL, the render library, is not currently multitasking.

From: Paul Haeberli [mailto:paulhaeberli@gmail.com]
Sent: Sat, 13 Nov 2021 15:04
To: discuss@lists.openscad.org
Subject: [OpenSCAD] I'd like a OpenSCAD compute service running in the cloud. Is this already available?

I'd love to have apps on iOS or Linux or Mac that can send

compute intensive jobs to cloud servers and get the results

back fast. Maybe 50 cores running would be nice.

Does this kind of service exist? If not, do you have any hints

on how to set it up?  Maybe also have services for computing

signed distance surfaces like:

 https://github.com/fogleman/sdf

Thoughts?

--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
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Doug -

Does your curv library support csg of .stl files and can it also radially
expand .stl
files?

On Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 11:42 AM Doug Moen doug@moens.org wrote:

I understand that OpenSCAD and CGAL is not multi-threaded.  I am just
talking about wanting could servers that I can send 100 or 200 .scad files
with .stl files and have them rapidly rendered to .stl.  I'd like to
interactively vary complex geometry and see the results as fast as possible.

On Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 3:31 PM MichaelAtOz oz.at.michael@gmail.com wrote:

Well, there is the thingiverse customizer, that's what got me into openscad
originally

On Sat, 13 Nov 2021, 17:30 Paul Haeberli, paulhaeberli@gmail.com wrote:

I will take a look at thingiverse customizer - thanks for the pointer.

On Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 4:37 PM A. Craig West acraigwest@gmail.com wrote:

Sorry, no, Curv doesn't read or process STL files. I recommend OpenSCAD for this. I intended to compare Curv to fogleman/sdf.

An SDF modeller like Curv has more powerful CSG operations: you can sculpt a curved surface using metaballs, or engrave a texture into a surface, or use exotic CSG ops like twist and bend.
Compared to other SDF modellers, Curv has fast mesh export, it models full colour objects (eg, marble or woodgrain), which you can 3D print at service provider like Shapeways. And it has a very responsive customizer which can update the model at 60 FPS while you drag a slider to tweak a parameter. But it is NOT a plugin replacement for OpenSCAD. It doesn't import 3D model files and it lacks some of OpenSCAD's primitives.

On Sat, Nov 13, 2021, at 5:26 PM, Paul Haeberli wrote:

I've been running on a bottom of the line M1 Mac Mini for a few months now.
The released and dev snapshot of OpenSCAD are both 64-bit Intel, and
although I haven't rigorously measured, performance feels about the same as
it was on my previous bottom of the line Intel Mac Mini.

I haven't tried compiling OpenSCAD from source (I've never
installed Homebrew) but that's a good suggestion to get a significant speed
up.

PrusaSlicer is a universal app, so it's fast on Apple Silicon Macs.

On Sat, Nov 13, 2021 at 3:30 PM Bob Carlson bob@rjcarlson.com wrote: