Scripting and Documenting OpenSCAD designs using openscad-amu and Doxygen

thingiverse

Using Doxygen to Automate OpenSCAD Designs. This project has undergone significant improvements, and I encourage you to review the design flow and template developed based on the exploration conducted here. Language-based mechanical design, as seen in OpenSCAD, offers the potential for increased design efficiencies through the use of reusable parameterized design libraries. Like software design, language-based mechanical design efficiency directly correlates with well-documented robust libraries and good automated design flows. For some time, I have been searching for a method to both automate (i.e., script) OpenSCAD design flows and document library components effectively. For documentation purposes, it seems natural to leverage Doxygen as a tool to couple the documentation with design at the source level, where it has the best chance to remain coherent. Although OpenSCAD is currently the most capable open-source CAD tool for language-based mechanical design, it presently lacks a scripting interface that would make it more conducive to automated design flows. This example presents a way to both document OpenSCAD designs and script the invocation of OpenSCAD for target component compilation. Pre-built documentation and targets can be found in the file autodoc_pb.zip, and a pre-built PDF reference manual is available in the file refman_pb.pdf. To rebuild the documentation yourself from the source file, install the prerequisite software and then type make. Afterwards, view the html-based documentation by opening the file: autodoc/html/index.html, and the latex-generated pdf-version by opening the file: autodoc/latex/refman.pdf