OpenSCAD Workbench¶

In one sentence: The OpenSCAD workbench imports and exports OpenSCAD .scad / .csg files and, when the OpenSCAD binary is installed, adds convex-hull, Minkowski sum, and mesh boolean tools powered by OpenSCAD's robust geometry engine — plus a set of always-available shape-repair and tree-management utilities.

What is the OpenSCAD workbench for?¶

OpenSCAD is a script-based solid modeller that produces geometry from a declarative description language. The FreeCAD OpenSCAD workbench serves two roles:

Bridge to OpenSCAD — import .scad or .csg files as FreeCAD objects, and export FreeCAD geometry back to .csg for use in OpenSCAD.
Utility toolkit — a collection of shape-repair, mesh-manipulation, and document-tree tools that are useful regardless of whether OpenSCAD is installed.

The Mesh workbench's boolean operations internally use OpenSCAD's CGAL-based boolean engine when available, because it is more robust for meshes than OCCT's B-rep boolean operations.

OpenSCAD binary requirement¶

Many tools in this workbench require the OpenSCAD executable to be installed and its path configured in Edit → Preferences → OpenSCAD.

Tool group	Requires binary
Import .scad / .csg	Required
Add OpenSCAD Element	Required
Mesh Boolean	Required
Hull	Required
Minkowski Sum	Required
All other tools	Not required

If the binary is not found at startup, FreeCAD prints a warning and the binary-dependent tools are hidden from the menu and toolbar.

Import and export¶

Import¶

When the OpenSCAD binary is configured, FreeCAD registers the .scad and .csg import filter. Use File → Import or drag-and-drop:

.scad — full OpenSCAD source (FreeCAD calls OpenSCAD to convert to CSG first)
.csg — OpenSCAD's intermediate CSG format (read directly)

The imported geometry appears as Part or Mesh features in the document tree, depending on the OpenSCAD primitives used.

Export¶

Use File → Export and choose OpenSCAD CSG Format (*.csg) to export the selected shape. The exported file contains a CSG representation of the shape's boundary.

Preferences¶

Edit → Preferences → OpenSCAD exposes:

Setting	Description
OpenSCAD executable	Path to the `openscad` binary. Auto-detected on first launch if found in PATH.
Transfer mechanism	How FreeCAD passes data to OpenSCAD. Change if using Snap/AppImage packages that have sandbox restrictions.
Mesh fallback quality	Resolution used when exporting to STL for mesh boolean operations.