BlocksCAD, basically kid-friendly OpenSCAD

Hi everyone,

I work at a family-friendly makerspace called Einstein's Workshop. Among (many) other things, part of my job is to teach people how to use OpenSCAD. Young children tend to get overwhelmed by syntax, but are fine with things like programming in Scratch. So, I put together a Scratch-like GUI for making OpenSCAD code, called BlocksCAD.

We're running a Kickstarter campaign to fund further development, including complete OpenSCAD integration, and open-sourcing the whole thing. You can check out the videos on the Kickstarter page at [www.kickstarter.com]

Please consider contributing, every bit helps!

My understanding is that scratch is implemented in squeak ( a version of smalltalk) Is BlocksCAD also implemented in squeak? I suspect not as your solution is web based.

It mentions that a desktop version will be made available if a funding goal is reached. What Desktop? Windows, Linux, Mac.
What language is BlocksCAD implemented in?

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/12/2014 03:44PM by KeithSloan.

We don't actually have any code in common with Scratch, just the goal of making programming-like stuff accessible to kids
BlocksCAD is implemented in javascript, and we're aiming to eventually incorporate OpenSCAD directly as the engine via emscripten. I've been in contact with the OpenSCAD devs about this and how to incorporate the necessary changes to OpenSCAD into the mainline.

Desktop will target Windows, Linux, and Mac. I'm a Linux-only user of nearly 15 years, so everything we do will have 100% Linux compatibility, guaranteed. In my experience, it's much easier to port from Linux to other platforms than vice versa. What we currently have works on all three, and android too, though touchscreen is basically unusable right now.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/13/2014 12:08PM by matt.minuti.

When I just checked you have funding of $6460 out of a target of $42,000 with only 55 hours to go.
Seems to me that there is a good chance you will miss your funding but fingers crossed for a late surge.

Do you have any plans for if you don't make funding?

I guess its not so easy to get people to sponsor when the final deliverable is Open Source i.e. free so getting sponsors requires people who are altruistic.