Replying to posts from the other thread:
You can definitely use CadQuery without a visualizer. CadQuery has no UI, it can be told to just spit out a STL file you can then use with 3D printing software.
But it’d be a huge pain, unless you’re big brained enough to just do all the math in your head and have perfect results on the first attempt. For the system to be useful you need to pair it to a viewer, so it’s built with the assumption it will be used interactively and iteratively with a visualizer and live reload.
For now CQ-editor seems it will do the trick. If this were to reach a wider audience, I’d look into rigging it up to a Jupyter notebook so people could run this stuff in their browser instead.
For now, the system is definitely made with the assumption it will be 3D printed! For example it bakes in tolerances that make sense with thermal expansion.
Another thing I’d like to do is SVG export. I’d be great to have a template you could use to print on a transparency sheet.