Products · Product
OpenSCAD
Raised as a usability problem by 49 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2016–2026), in 36 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Rendering is too slow to wait for, even on simple modelsUnreviewed
20162026- Rendering interface is too slow to be usable even for simple models2024-05-21
- Renders very slowly, and smooth output needs even slower settings2021-06-15
- Rendering slows to hours at high detail, processes get killed2021-02-17
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 50 complaints
- Code-based modeling is exhausting, requiring rational thought about every minimal detail2026-10-15
- Commenter calls OpenSCAD's UI terrible and says it is not worth considering as a CAD tool2026-10-11
- Clean code isn't the default path; positioning is global and parts can't be attached easily2026-10-10
- Programming-style CAD language is so unintuitive it feels purposefully unusable2026-05-18
- Chamfering and filleting are inconvenient to do in OpenSCAD2026-03-30
- Documentation is so poor it takes the commenter forever to learn things2026-02-20
- Generating fancy surface and perforated patterns is painfully slow2026-01-28
- Using code-based CAD for irregular designs is extremely frustrating, like editing SVG in notepad2026-01-27
- Found the CAD tool helpful for simple things but frustrating and disappointing overall2025-12-26
- Commenter couldn't figure out how to operate graphical 3D CAD software with a 2D GUI2025-12-21
- Hard to figure out how to define fillets and chamfers2025-12-21
- Can't tell which side of an object is front or back, or its dimensions2025-12-21
- Hard to understand old scripts; needs lots of math for simple constraints2025-12-20
- View takes minutes to update once geometry gets complicated2025-12-20
- Code-based modeling makes users specify everything explicitly, unlike interactive CAD tools2025-12-20
- Found the tool clunky to use for geometry iteration projects2025-11-24
- Their UI causes irritating limitations for hobbyist CAD work2025-11-18
- Fillets and minkowski-style rounding are slow and global, hard to limit to one area2025-10-03
- Couldn't figure out how to do advanced things in it2025-07-16
- Vectorization syntax is confusing, a kludge that is hard to understand2025-01-29
- Nested code is hard to manage, and positions must be tracked manually with no constraints2025-01-28
- Rendering interface is too slow to be usable even for simple models2024-05-21
- Changing a model means solving constraints by hand, which makes errors easy to introduce2024-05-21
- Language limitations are downright infuriating at times for users2024-04-17
- Coplanar faces z-fight, so users must add epsilon offsets everywhere as busywork2023-10-23
- Unnamed positional arguments and no custom types make the language clunky to program in2023-02-10
- Realtime preview suffers z-fighting, making exact CSG operations hard to debug2022-08-21
- Cannot place a piece relative to another's edge; absolute coordinates break when rotating2022-04-08
- Axis distance labels become unreadable when they overlap a surface, and transparency works on only one object2022-02-10
- STL files generated by OpenSCAD sometimes fail, forcing a workaround through FreeCAD2022-02-10
- Conditional assignments need the obtuse ternary syntax, which is frustrating to write everywhere2021-12-14
- Steep learning curve; commenter can't get up to speed with it2021-11-07
- Boolean operations produce z-fighting, requiring manual workarounds like cutting more than needed2021-10-21
- Every design step feels like the scripting language works against the user, taking far too long2021-10-19
- Cannot measure distances between faces or vertices in the preview2021-10-10
- Basic tasks like hollowing out a 3mm shell are nearly impossible2021-06-29
- Getting usable output requires hoops; complex models make the program nearly unusable2021-06-16
- Renders very slowly, and smooth output needs even slower settings2021-06-15
- Domain-specific language is a pain to learn2021-06-15
- Rendering slows to hours at high detail, processes get killed2021-02-17
- Becomes unusable when a PNG image is used as a heightmap2021-02-17
- Script-only modeling is clunky, slow to iterate, lacks visual feedback2020-09-18
- Underspecified language leaves ambiguous cases that users must test to learn behaviour2020-09-18
- Hard to predict which approach will take days of CPU time2020-09-18
- Unusable for non-programmers who expect mouse-driven dragging and adding features2019-12-27
- Clunky and impossible to discover; users must follow tutorials to learn it2019-01-05
- Hard to manipulate 3D objects with a 2D cursor, point-and-click editing confusing2019-01-03
- Can't find a sign up link, only a request a demo option2019-01-02
- Text-based design is limiting and about ten times slower than Fusion for most work2019-01-02
- No measure tool, and previewing and rendering are very slow2019-01-02