Compile automation and source-based documentation for OpenSCAD designs.

Getting started

To get started using openscad-amu, please see the GitHub source repository.

What is it?

The openscad-amu has been developed to support the construction of automated design flows, using GNU make, and documentation generation, using Doxygen, for OpenSCAD designs. It provides a framework that allows for documentation and build-scripts to be embedded in *.scad source along side the design. The openscad-amu is composed of a collection of programs, a makefile script library, and support scripts that work together to automate and document OpenSCAD designs.

The documentation is converted using Doxygen and openscad-amu includes a source-code preprocessor for *.scad (and *.bash). This preprocessor provides additional Doxygen special commands and features useful for documenting OpenSCAD designs. The design automation build-scripts, embedded in the source-code, are extracted by openscad-amu and used to construct (always coherent) makefiles that manage the generation of design targets.

By utilizing openscad-amu, OpenSCAD design documentation lives close to to the source code and dependency-based targets generation is scripted for use in code testing, code documentation and design construction. Moreover, with GNU make, targets can be constructed in parallel which drastically reduces compile times for larger design projects.

A bit more detail

Both the design flow automation scripting and documentation is done in the design *.scad source files using structured comments. This meta-data is extracted at compile-time to construct makefiles that manage design compilation and documentation.

As a designs size increases, so does the benefit of using openscad-amu. Compiling design targets one-by-one is times consuming, error prone and discourages design optimization and/or exploration.

A windfall is a linear reduction in compile time, with processor thread count, via parallel invocations of the single-threaded OpenSCAD compiler. Once compilation flows are described, using the openscad-amu scripting scheme, each design targets are kept current from source as needed during automatic build processing via GNU make. In other words, targets are reconstructed only when needed due to changes in dependent source, source libraries, or configurations in the makefile itself; just type make to update.