Though I tend to be modelling things in Google Sketchup, I've just started my journey with Openscad. I find it a bit difficult to use, but appreciate it would be really good to learn it. The first thing I'm using it for is importing a number of stls to produce a plate of different parts to print, using the transform and import_stl commands. This is relatively easy - here's the sort of code:
translate([0,0,0])
import_stl("/Volumes/MacHD/Reprap parts/bar-clamp.stl", convexity = 5);
translate([30,0,0])
import_stl("/Volumes/MacHD/Reprap parts/bar-clamp.stl", convexity = 5);
translate([60,0,0])
import_stl("/Volumes/MacHD/Reprap parts/bar-clamp.stl", convexity = 5);
In this example I'm creating an stl of the same part, which could be done just as easily in Skeinforge, but it is also easy to change the filename for any other file and change it's position on the bed. Is this how everyone else does this, or am I missing a really obvious program that can do this? I know you can import multiple stls into Reprap host (which doesn't work well for me), but there doesn't seem to be anyway to export the combined stl.