eSCAD - An OpenSCAD Eclipse Editor

[Patrick Lie]

Hi All,

There was a discussion a week or two ago about external OpenSCAD editors that inspired me to dust off my .scad Eclipse editor project and post it here for comments/feedback.  It's still under development but has the following:

Features

• Auto indenting, formatting, syntax highlighting, find/replace, etc all the usual Eclipse editor functionality
• Content-assist (aka Auto Complete) for user defined modules, variable and built-in OpenSCAD functions
• Able to reference modules and variable that are in other .scad files through includes (i.e. the editor will know about modules/variables you have declared in other files)
• Refactoring/renaming across files when files are inside of a project
• Modules in the outline view

Installation

1. In Eclipse, goto Help->Install New Software
2. Click Add, in the Location field put: http://p2.patricklie.com/escad, in Name field put "eSCAD" or such.  Click OK
3. You should see "eSCAD" and the eSCAD Editor show up, check the box and click next
4. Accept License, etc (you will see a dialog about certificates and such, this is because I am currently self-signing the jar).

Usage

• You should be able to open any .scad file and just go ahead and work (I suggest you open OpenSCAD for preview and set it to auto-reload/compile like others have suggested)
• If you put files into a project, you need to make sure you project paths are set correctly otherwise include paths may not be followed correctly.

This is early days for the plugin and there are several features missing such as:

• Not all OpenSCAD functions are implemented (doing them as I go)
• There are probably various bugs in the grammar

If people feel this is useful, i'm thinking of:

• Adding templates for content assist (aka, auto-complete module/function signatures)
• Validations on syntax
• Putting it into the core Eclipse repository

Whew! Hopefully people find this useful and i'm open to comments/feedback/bugs here or feel free to email me directly.

Thanks,

Patrick

[Peter Holtermann]

Hi Patrick,

sounds very interesting. Unfortunately the URL  http://p2.patricklie.com/escad does not exist anymore. Did you give up the project? I am trying to use eclipse as an openSCAD IDE at the moment by using the openSCAD commandline for building meshes from .scad-file and meshlab to display them. 

But if you already have build something I would be interested in trying it. 

Regards, Peter

[Patrick Lie]

Hi Peter,

I changed my domain provider a little while back and looks like some records didn't take, it should be working again now.  I haven't made any updates lately, but i'm happy to address any feedback you might have.  Give it a try and let me know what you think!

Thanks,

Patrick

[Peter Holtermann]

Hi Patrick,

I just installed the plugin. And now I have syntax highlighting, which helps a lot.  Obviously not everything works yet, but it is so much better than plain text.

One thing I did not understand yet: What is the Compiler setting in the OpenScad preferences for? Does it have any functionality?

Thanks, Peter

[Patrick Lie]

Hi Peter,

Glad its working out for you, the Compiler settings for OpenScad are an artifact of the plugin framework i'm using, it doesn't have any functionality at the moment.

Patrick

[Moritz Keller]

Hi Patrick,

unforunately the links broken again (403). I was thinking about an IDE for OpenSCAD for a while now, so I really like your idea with the eclipse plugin, and I'm looking forward to give it a try.

Thanks

Moritz

Am Mittwoch, 7. Mai 2014 06:53:57 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick Lie:

[Patrick Lie]

Hi Moritz,

Thanks for trying it out!  Are you trying to access the Url in a web browser or through Eclipse (Install new software)?  If the former you're getting the 403 Forbidden because I have disabled directory listing (for security).  I just checked through Eclipse and it appears to be working.  Please try the Installation instructions above, if they don't work in Eclipse can you provide the whole error text?

Thanks,
Patrick

[Moritz Keller]

Hi Patrick,

my bad, did not really read your instructions, sorry. Was able to install it on my windows machine, but not on my linux pc.
I do get the following errors:
Cannot complete the install because one or more required items could not be found.
  Software being installed: eSCAD Eclipse Editor 0.9.0.201405061742 (com.patricklie.escad.feature.group 0.9.0.201405061742)
  Missing requirement: com.patricklie.xtext.openscad.ui 0.9.0.201405061742 (com.patricklie.xtext.openscad.ui 0.9.0.201405061742) requires 'bundle org.eclipse.xtext.ui 0.0.0' but it could not be found
  Cannot satisfy dependency:
    From: eSCAD Eclipse Editor 0.9.0.201405061742 (com.patricklie.escad.feature.group 0.9.0.201405061742)
    To: com.patricklie.xtext.openscad.ui [0.9.0.201405061742]

Do you think there is something wrong with my eclispe/linux installation, or is this about the plugin or the sources?

Thanks,

Moritz

Am Mittwoch, 7. Mai 2014 06:53:57 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick Lie:

[Patrick Lie]

Interesting, may I ask which version of Eclipse you are running on your linux pc?

Thanks,

Patrick

[Peter Holtermann]

Hi Patrick, hi Moritz,

I think(!) I had the same Problem with my brand-new Luna installation. What I did was:

Help->Eclipse Marketplace...->Search Find: xtext

Finds Xtext 2.7.2

Install

I think I reinstalled Patricks Plugin afterwards.

Maybe that helps.

Regards, Peter

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[Patrick Lie]

Ah Peter has given me the vital clue to the issue.  It appears Eclipse's dependency resolution is not fully automated, and the url for any other required plugins must be known to Eclipse beforehand, to fix this before installing eSCAD you should do the following:

Goto Help->Install New Software->Add

Name: Xtext

Url: http://download.eclipse.org/modeling/tmf/xtext/updates/composite/releases/

Click "OK"

Now proceed with installing eSCAD, it should be able to find the required plugins then.

I'm guessing what happened to you Moritz is that your Windows Eclipse installation already has this repo configured either with your distro or through a previous installation.

Patrick

[Moritz Keller]

I tried to install xtext in the described and other ways, but I got similar dependency issues. But for the moment, I don't have time to test it properly anyway, so I will look at it in December again. But for sure I was wondering if it is really worth it, to invest that much time in OpenSCAD, as there is for example FreeCAD, which is developed rather fast, and I think the script CAD method is more limited in its applications than a GUI scad (which of course can have a script function too).

Thanks

Moritz
Am Mittwoch, 7. Mai 2014 06:53:57 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick Lie:

[Patrick Lie]

I'm sorry you couldn't get it working Moritz, if Xtext isn't installing, sounds like a clean install of the latest Eclipse is needed (Xtext is an eclipse project, so if it doesn't work, something is really wrong).

OpenSCAD is great for people with a software engineering background and familiar with those concepts instead of "traditional" CAD, in my case I feel very at home with the declarative syntax.  That being said, there's lots of good free and commercial CAD options out there (a lot of people swear by Solidworks), I hope you find one that works for you.

Thanks,

Patrick

[Moritz Keller]

Never mind, I still got it on my windows machine. But I did purge the eclispe installation on the Linux machine... And I do see the advantages of script CAD, but I started to design my own 3D printer, and I start to see the limits of script CAD, or the limits of my imagination, that should be compensated by the GUI. So I think I'll give Solidworks a try then.

Am Mittwoch, 7. Mai 2014 06:53:57 UTC+2 schrieb Patrick Lie:

[Roberto Marquez]

I would really like to try your OpenSCAD plugin for Eclipse.

But the URL (http://p2.patricklie.com/escad/) gives a 'Forbidden' response.

Has the URL changed?

[Roberto Marquez]

I tried the URL in the IDE and it started downloading the plugin, but then gave this response:

session context was:(profile=epp.package.jee, phase=org.eclipse.equinox.internal.p2.engine.phases.Collect, operand=, action=).No repository found containing: osgi.bundle,org.eclipse.net4j.jms.api,3.0.0.v20110215-1551

I am trying a couple things now...

[Patrick Lie]

Hi Roberto,

Nothing has changed on my end, what version of Eclipse are you using? I think you've also figured out that you need to use the link in Eclipse (see instructions at: http://www.patricklie.com/projects/escad/) and you can't access it in a browser.

Seems like this may be an issue with Luna (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/27275035/install-new-software-in-eclipse-luna-gives-always-the-error-no-repository-found)

Thanks,

Patrick

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[Roberto Marquez]

Thanks for your quick reply, Patrick.

I tried saw the two links you pointed out, earlier.

Adding http://www.eclipse.org/modeling/updates/ to the Software Sites did the trick.

Thanks again.  I am trying out OpenSCAD editing in Eclipse now.

[Madu Biradar]

Hi Patrick ,

Thank you for your information. I would like to learn Javascad programming in eclipse, which is best source learn or do you have any documents those can help me?

and I have written Javascad program using .java extension , will it execute on JVM compiler ? for me it is not compiling..if not a correct way then which compiler I need to set path.

Thank you,

Biradar

[Patrick Lie]

Hi Madu,

Thanks for your interest, eSCAD is an eclipse editor for the OpenSCAD syntax and is not for the Javascad API.  I'm assuming you've gone through the tutorials on the Javascad site already, so I think your best bet is to contact the Javascad developers directly if you're having issues getting it up and running.

Regards,
Patrick