Refactored Faster Rolodex Compatible Filament Swatches (OpenSCAD)

prusaprinters

The filament swatch Rolodex by 3D Printy is a great idea! However, while printing a bunch of swatches, I found the file sometimes took minutes to render - which really slowed down my experimentation to find the right size and text for each swatch. So to learn some more SCAD and more deeply understand the model, I have done some significant code refactors on this file. This is a work in progress as I learn SCAD optimization techniques. There may be more performance gains in the future!Initial load+preview(F5) times, on Windows 10 with OpenSCAD 2021.01 (YMMV), opened by double-clicking the .scad file: Original - Total rendering time: 0:00:00.445Refactored - Total rendering time: 0:00:00.340Text change preview times, by adding a trailing ‘e’ to line 1 text and previewing:Original - Total rendering time: 0:00:00.298Refactored - Total rendering time: 0:00:00.352Full render(F6) times after a fresh reload:Original - Total rendering time: 0:02:13.948Refactor - Total rendering time: 0:01:44.742Refactor + reduced $fn - Total rendering time: 0:00:41.564In this version, you will find:All the same variables as in the base file! Just use whatever settings you had before. See the original for more info about what each does.Except: Text line positions are now lower case! Use ["left", "center"].The model renders flat, in printable orientation. Convenient for color-change slicing.This file is licensed CC-Attribution, the same as the original file. Use it the same way you would have the original. Refactor changelog:Render each object flat in the native X-Y plane, with origin at the bottom left. This removes a lot of width/2 calculations, and confusing Y and Z coordinates. Plus, it enables:Final position is controlled by an outer translate call surrounding each object.All dimensions while creating the shape are based on the [0,0,0] origin for convenience.Render all shapes and text that go all the way through a card or spacer in 2D, then extrude that 2D shape to 3D all at one time.Generalize fillet function to round corners, generates a 2D negative round instead of removing cubes and re-adding cylinders in 3D.Basic card shape and Rolodex hole generation code are shared between cards and spacers - so they will always be the same.De-duplicated code for ring and star holes - now there is only one location where these are created.Cleaned up the logic for combined flag uses quite a bit - when ring and star holes are applied, or when card and spacer are both rendered.Combined text generation by making Line_x_Position variables take the same values as the halign argument. Saved a bunch of code for relocating text, and each line is generated on exactly one line of code for easier modification.Total line count reduced from 501 to 326 - with all the same flags and features. Much nicer to readPre-render combined card shape before differencing with subtractive shapes. This reduces some of the math complexity in that difference calculation.Added some tiny additional margins for subtractive shapes, so fast previews don't show ghost surfaces.Reduced explicit $fn used for extrusion to 32 - not a significant quality impact at Rolodex size. This has the biggest performance impact, but is not shipped by default - I printed with 100, and have not tested it yet. Control with the extrude_fn variable at the top.TODOs / investigations:Where might the render() call give additional benefits?More render optimization possible? Need to learn more!This was an interesting exercise in learning OpenSCAD! I hope someone can learn from seeing two different code approaches to the exact same model.