This is a status report on the progress of the updated documentation. We are planning to move our documentation to GitBuilding which we have been writing for the last couple of years. This should allow us to have separate sets of documentation for the different versions of the microscope without rewriting everything. This will make things like the bill of materials much less like a “make your own adventure” book.
One thing that has delayed us moving is that we need to take new photos. Every time the microscope changes, we need new photos. This means that it is never the right time to do the docs.
Recently we have been doing a big clean up of the OpenSCAD code and have found a number of way to improve the rendering speed to allow us to make OpenSCAD renders of the assembly automatically on the GitLab CI. Here is the progress so far:
This might be the right place to write down the one issue I encountered with the build docu:
“Actuator assembly”, Step 3 (cutting the supports) is missing the little brdges about 10mm from the bottom of the outer uprights (or, if they are not supposed to be cut, it should be mentioned).
Also, it would be nice to have an indication of what the initial height of the basic optics module should be when fixed to the main body, so one has a good starting point for later adjustments.
Thanks. Yeah, I am going to do a full step by step build here and try to capture every step in a short and succinct instruction. We will try to move all of the explanations an anecdotes out of the docs while still making them available for those who wish to learn more.
We have found a way to get 3D gLTF files out of OpenSCAD (or more I wrote something to do it). This should mean we can have 3D assemblies in the documentation. I have uploaded an example here. It takes a little while to load
