Hello Cube | vcad

Welcome to vcad! In this tutorial, you'll create your first 3D shape—a simple cube. This is the "Hello World" of CAD.

Creating a Cube

Every vcad model starts with a primitive—a basic shape like a cube, cylinder, or sphere. Here's how to create a cube:

What's happening here?

Part::cube() creates a new cube primitive
The first argument ("my_cube") is the part name
The next three arguments are width, depth, and height in millimeters
write_stl() exports the geometry to a file

Try it yourself

In the playground above, try changing the cube dimensions. Make it taller, wider, or turn it into a thin plate. Notice how the 3D preview updates automatically.

The Part Type

In vcad, everything is a Part. A Part represents 3D geometry that you can transform, combine with other parts, and export to various formats.

The basic primitives are:

Primitive	Parameters
`Part::cube()`	name, width, depth, height
`Part::cylinder()`	name, radius, height, segments
`Part::sphere()`	name, radius, segments
`Part::cone()`	name, bottom_radius, top_radius, height, segments

Centered Variants

By default, Part::cube() places the corner at the origin. For many modeling tasks, it's more convenient to have the shape centered:

use vcad::centered_cube;

// Centered at origin
let cube = centered_cube("box", 30.0, 30.0, 30.0);

The centered variants (centered_cube, centered_cylinder) place the geometry's center at the origin, making it easier to combine shapes.

Next Steps

Now that you can create basic shapes, let's learn how to transform them—move them around, rotate them, and scale them to different sizes.