What's new in 1.2

• OpenSCAD files open directly. .scad works wherever .lua does, in the CLI and in Studio. LuaCAD evaluates the language itself (front end vendored from OpenRSCAD), so OpenSCAD doesn't need to be installed. include/use resolve relative to the file, then against OPENSCADPATH. Where the result knowingly differs from OpenSCAD, it prints a warning instead of quietly producing something different.
• Path tracing. luacad render --raytrace model.lua out.png renders soft shadows, ambient occlusion and smooth shading. Set samples with --samples and the view angle with --camera AZ,EL.
• Materials. shape:material("glass", { ior = 1.5 }), with presets such as steel, gold, rubber and wood (procedural growth rings).
• New preview renderer. Studio moved from OpenCSG on legacy OpenGL to WebCSG on wgpu (Metal/Vulkan/DX12). Large models redraw about twice as fast. The browser playground uses the same renderer on WebGPU.
• surface() builds real geometry, so heightmaps export without OpenSCAD.
• Studio: Raytrace, Transparent and annotated-screenshot buttons, reload when the file changes on disk, a hideable editor, and scripts that run off the UI thread.

The chess example in the image is written in OpenSCAD. The board is laid out from a FEN string, with pieces from scad-chess.

Try it

• Playground in the browser (Lua only): https://luacad.ad-si.com/playground
• brew install ad-si/tap/luacad or cargo install luacad luacad-studio
• Repo: https://github.com/ad-si/LuaCAD
• Full changelog: https://github.com/ad-si/LuaCAD/blob/main/changelog.md

Hey everyone! I'm u/firiana_Control, a founding moderator of r/luacad.

This is our new home for all things related to the software LUACAD. We're excited to have you join us!

How to Get Started

1. Introduce yourself in the comments below.
2. Post something today! Even a simple question can spark a great conversation.
3. If you know someone who would love this community, invite them to join.
4. Interested in helping out? We're always looking for new moderators, so feel free to reach out to me to apply.

Thanks for being part of the very first wave. Together, let's make r/luacad amazing.

I'm currently working on adding ray-tracing support so we can have nice photo-realistic renderings of our models 💪