It is certainly not the best tool for every job, but it has its uses, and it's a good tool to have in the toolbox. To a large extent, you can use it without knowing the details of the syntax (which is pretty arcane), just by having some template script and changing a value or two. If you use the Customizer in Thingiverse, then you're using OpenSCAD this way, only with an interface between you and the script.Jules wrote:Guess I'd better bite the bullet and learn to use Openscad one of these days....
All you need to do is to download and install OpenSCAD from the www.openscad.org main web page, open it, and copy in one of the scripts we've been posting (the ones using the minkowski() function can take half a minute to show up, as it spends a lot of time number-crunching). Then menu selection Design->Render prepares it for export, and File->Export->Export as STL gets you the output you want to pull into another tool.