Edit: Due to the fact that this article is old, the installation instructions may not work anymore. In order to successfully install the latest version of Openscad, please access the openscad tag and open the latest article (the one on top).
The latest installation instructions for Openscad
As you may know, OpenSCAD is an open-source CAD application for creating solid 3D models. While it does not behave as an interactive modeller, the software reads a script file that describes the object and renders the 3D model from the script.
The latest version available is OpenSCAD 2015.03, which has been recently released, coming with changes.
Language Features:
- Added text() module for 2D text
- Added offset() module for 2D offsets
- Added list comprehensions and let()
- Added concat() function
- Added chr() function
- surface() can now take PNG images as input
- min() and max() can now take a vector argument
- 2D minkowski can now handle polygons with holes
- Variables can now be assigned in local blocks without using assign()
Program Features:
- Added Toolbar icons
- New code editor based on QScintilla
- Added Splash screen
- Added SVG export
- Added AMF export
- Added –viewall and –autocenter cmd-line parameters
- GUI is now translated into German, Czech, Spanish, French and Russian
- MDI (Multiple Document Interface) is now available on all platforms
- Color schemes for viewer and editor can be user-edited using JSON files
- GUI components are now dockable
- Added Tickmarks on axes
Bugfixes/improvements:
- Performance improvement: 2D (clipper), preview, hull, minkowski, surface
- Performance improvement: Reduce duplicate evaluation of identical expressions
- Better recursion behavior
- STL export and import is now more robust
- Internal cavities are better supported
- New examples
- Better mirror() and scale() behavior when using negative factors
Deprecations:
- polyhedron() now takes a faces= argument rather than triangles=
- assign() is no longer needed. Local variables can be created in any scope
In this article I will show you how to install OpenSCAD 2015.03 on Ubuntu 14.10 Utopic Unicorn, Ubuntu 14.04 Trusty Tahr, Ubuntu 12.04 Precise Pangolin, Linux Mint 17.1 Rebecca, Linux Mint 17 Qiana, Linux Mint 13 Maya, Pinguy OS 14.04, Elementary OS 0.3 Freya, Elementary OS 0.2 Luna, Deepin 2014, Peppermint Five, LXLE 14.04, Linux Lite 2 and other Ubuntu derivative systems.
Because it is available via PPA, installing OpenSCAD 2015.03 on Ubuntu 14.10, Ubuntu 14.04, Ubuntu 12.04 and derivative systems is easy. All you have to do is add the ppa to your system, update the local repository index and install the openscad package. Like this:
$ sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:openscad/releases
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install openscad
Optional, to remove openscad, do:
$ sudo apt-get remove openscad