LuaCAD
Dev tools
parametric cad
SHOW HN2026
106points
25comments
#640of 4,366 in 2026
Top 15%of 2026 by points
How HN took it
CuriousMostly questions and neutral comments
5 positive, 6 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 1 critical, out of 12 comments about the project. Thread score +0.32.
Idea: 2 for, 0 againstDesign: 1 for, 1 against
The thread, comment by comment
Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.
positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker
What HN said
What people liked
Lua is a better scripting language than OpenSCAD's
From 2 comments
Love it! OpenSCAD has very painful syntax. Is it possible to easily do bevels/chamfers or does it have the same limitations as OpenSCAD there?
manny_rat on HNI'm pretty sure it's Turing complete by now. If it was conceptualized as a limited language and only became a full fledged programming language over time, it would certainly…
adius on HN
Native BOSL2 support is useful
From 2 comments
Love it! OpenSCAD has very painful syntax. Is it possible to easily do bevels/chamfers or does it have the same limitations as OpenSCAD there?
manny_rat on HNAwesome! I use both OpenSCAD and BOSL2, looking forward to test it!
hegjon on HN
Objections
Chamfers and fillets make parts harder to manufacture
From 1 comment
Quite easy to add chamfers to everything in the CAD file. But your manufacturing guy is going to strangle you...
adastra22 on HN
OpenSCAD's non-Turing-complete design has benefits that are lost
From 2 comments
Isn't OpenSCAD's limited (non-Turing complete) language a feature?
adastra22 on HNIn the pedantic sense, yes. You can use recursive functions with tail-call optimization, or list comprehensions to emulate a universal Turing machine. But my point is that…
adastra22 on HN
Requests
Web-based playground
From 1 comment
Does this have a web-based playground? I find https://www.pythonscad.org/playground/ to be nice to try out the project.
fhn on HN
Fillet support for unions
From 1 comment
Can you fillet unions? Like, if I union a cube with a smaller cube sticking out of its side, can I make a fillet so that the edge where the two cubes' faces intersect doesn't…
kragen on HN
Questions
Can it read and write files from the filesystem?
From 2 comments
Is it able to access the file system and write/read files? I've been doing that via PythonSCAD for my current project https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview and it might be…
WillAdams on HNYes, it is. The most notable aspect of this (and one which I've complained in the past) is the inability to write out file, which has security implications.
WillAdams on HN
Is programmatic CAD faster than SolidWorks-style tools?
From 1 comment
Honest question here -- for doing 3D parametric design, is the "programmatic" approach a good thing? If you compare doing a design in LuaCAD to something like Solidworks or ProE,…
vrinsd on HN
Alternatives named
OpenSCAD
From 2 comments
Isn't OpenSCAD's limited (non-Turing complete) language a feature?
adastra22 on HNLove it! OpenSCAD has very painful syntax. Is it possible to easily do bevels/chamfers or does it have the same limitations as OpenSCAD there?
manny_rat on HN
PythonSCAD
From 2 comments
Does this have a web-based playground? I find https://www.pythonscad.org/playground/ to be nice to try out the project.
fhn on HNIs it able to access the file system and write/read files? I've been doing that via PythonSCAD for my current project https://github.com/WillAdams/gcodepreview and it might be…
WillAdams on HN
FreeCAD
From 2 comments
Really interesting! I actually use freecad so I'm use to that layer of the process but I'll check this out. Also good to see the work being done in modeling software these days
tolugenius on HNI've tried to get into Solidworks, Fusion, and FreeCAD several times, but every time I come back to programmatic CAD. It just better matches how I think about 3D design I guess.…
adius on HN
SolidWorks
From 1 comment
Honest question here -- for doing 3D parametric design, is the "programmatic" approach a good thing? If you compare doing a design in LuaCAD to something like Solidworks or ProE,…
vrinsd on HN