OpenShape Studio

I have been working on a program for building 3D-printable parts in the way my brain expects: put down a block, put down a cutter, remove some material, add a post, line up a hole, and keep going until the object on the screen looks like the object I need in my hand.

That probably sounds less glamorous than a quest to save a broken kingdom, but honestly, sometimes being able to make a small plastic bracket without spending a week becoming a CAD priest is its own kind of victory.

OpenShape Studio is a simple shape editor that generates OpenSCAD projects. It is meant to feel more like cutting, drilling, and stacking bits of material than sculpting a mysterious cloud of triangles. Boxes, cylinders, holes, standoffs, bosses, case shells, measurements, notes, and exports are all plain parts of the same little workshop.

Try the JavaScript version

The browser version is here so people can poke at it right away. It will not replace the desktop build for every job, especially the jobs that need native OpenSCAD mesh exports, but it is enough to make shapes, cut holes, try the workplane, read the manual, and get a feel for the whole strange little contraption.

If you are a machinist, electrician, plumber, mechanic, hobbyist, tradesman, or just somebody who occasionally says "I need a little plastic thing that does THIS," this is the direction I am trying to push it. It is not trying to be the biggest modeling package in the world. It is trying to be the one that lets me finish the part.

July 2, 2026
Posted by SJ Zero

The first public web copy of OpenShape Studio is now sitting on the OMA site, which is a sentence I probably would not have predicted when this site was mostly RPG demos, QB projects, and me shouting at Microsoft from a folding chair.

This release is not here because everything is finished. It is here because the program has crossed the line where it is more useful to keep using it, polishing it, and letting the rough edges get found by real work. The important thing is that the basic mental model is right: build the part yourself from simple operations, keep the project editable, and export the thing when it is time to print.

Have fun with it. Break something harmless. Make a box with a hole in it. Then make the slightly more specific box with the slightly more specific hole in it. That is where these tools start becoming useful.