From the turtle to the beetle

Abstract

Beetle Blocks is a visual, blocks-based programming language/environment for 3D design and fabrication, implemented on top of Berkeley Snap! and the ThreeJS 3D graphics library. Beetle Blocks programs move a graphical beetle around a 3D world, where it can place 3D shapes, extrude its path as a tube and generate geometry in other ways. The resulting 3D geometry can be exported as a 3D-printable file. Beetle Blocks also aims to offer a cloud system and social platform meant to provide the community with ways to interact and learn from each other. Beetle Blocks was previously implemented as a Scratch extension, and migrated into Snap! in 2014. We explain how the project has evolved since this migration, and in particular how the advanced programming features it inherited from Snap! shaped the kind of designs that are now possible with the new system.

Beetle Blocks es un lenguaje / entorno de programación Visual para el diseño 3D y fabricación, implementado sobre Berkeley Snap! y la librería de gráficos 3D ThreeJS.

Beetle Blocks és un llenguatge/entorn de programació Visual per al disseny 3D i fabricació, implementat sobre Berkeley Snap! i la llibreria de gràfics 3D ThreeJS.