Getting started

Downloading and installing MakersCAD

MakerSCAD can be installed for Windows, Linux and MacOS, in order to download your copy go to MakerSCAD Website

Warning

Remember this is an early Alpha testing version expect the following things to happen:

  • Things might break.
  • Current version might lose compatibility with future versions.
  • MakersCAD and its documentation are under heavy development things will change!

If you find any bugs and want to help us out send us an email at:

hello@MakersCAD.com

The site has the option to try MakerSCAD online, but we strongly recommend to install the software on your computer, to do that click on “I WANT THIS!”

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Enter your email address, name, and company in the form as shown in the picture.

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Pay what you want for MakerScad, that means that you decide how much the product is worth, so, enter the quantity you consider as a fair price and click on the button to proceed.

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Go to view product and download the latest version for your operating system

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in windows simply click on the installer and it will install the software

in linux open a terminal, go to the folder where the installer is located and type the following:

~$ chmod a+x makerscad-alpha-0.6.0-x86_64.AppImage

Then you will see this message, accept to make the file excecutable

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Opening MakersCAD

First go ahead and visit MakersCAD and get your copy of MakerSCAD.

The MakersCAD interface

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The MakersCAD UI

First, we have the main toolbar

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the main toolbar

Here you can:

  • SAVE your current work, it overwrites the latest save state.
  • LOAD the latest saved version
  • EXPORT your work into an xml file, for now the is test.xml increasing the file number, for example test1.xml,test2.xml… finding the next available number.
  • EXPORT the current 3d objects as a STL file.
  • EXPORT the current 3d objects as an OBJ file.
  • LOAD an asset (experimental).
  • Configure MakersCAD on the SETTINGS window.
  • Go to the Documentation to get HELP learning MakersCAD
  • Check the ABOUT window for authors, copyright licence and more.

Under the main toolbar at the left side is Work view

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Here we have the block library.

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The block library

  • CAD, Special blocks related to shapes, objects and parts.
  • Logic: blocks related to logical operations, like comparison operators, conditional and boolean values (true/false).
  • Loops: blocks for mathematical functions.
  • Math: blocks for mathematical functions.
  • Text: blocks for output, formatting and search operations with text strings.
  • Lists: This section contain tools that allows the creation of object groups and search specific elements in them.
  • Maps: Blocks to create data structures for keys and its values.
  • Color: Blocks for coloring objects.
  • Advanced js: These blocks can be used to write your own javascript code or import js files.
  • Parameters ui: Blocks to enhance the GUI.
  • IoT: Blocks to include connection to external webservices, invoke them, as well as send and receive parameters and messages with them in order to design IoT gadgets.
  • Variables: Blocks to create programming variables and assign values to them.
  • Functions: Blocks to declare and invoke functions.
  • Library: Examples to learn from, and experiment with.

and the block workspace where we will be creating our 3D world.

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The block workspace

Some useful controls for our block workspace:

  • Pan the view up, down, right and left:

    Right click + Drag
    
  • Zoom in and Out:

    Mouse wheel up or down
    

On the Left side at the the top theres our 3D view, where we can see a preview of our world.

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The 3D view.

Here you are able to:

  • look around your current object in 3D:

    Right click + Drag
    
  • Pan the camera up, down, right and left:

    Shift + Right click + Drag
    
    or
    
    MMB + Drag
    
  • Zoom in and Out:

    Mouse wheel up or down
    
    or
    
    Ctrl  + Right click + Drag
    

Under the 3D view theres a javascript viewer that allows us to view and debug the code created from our blocks to display our 3D world.

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The Javascript code viewer

Finally at the bottom its our Draw Toolbar, here we can turn on and off the automatic update to see in realtime the changes we are making on our blocks, manually update and DRAW the 3D View or PLAY our world in a new window.

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The draw toolbar