The development viewer

solid develop <path> is where you spend your time: it builds the node, serves a viewer, watches the source files, and rebuilds whenever you save — the CAD equivalent of a web framework’s development server.

The web viewer

By default, solid develop root serves the web viewer at http://localhost:8000. It shows the assembled model with orbit controls, a navigation tree of the nodes, and plays the animation of nodes that use self.time.

Edit and save any source file, and the affected parts are rebuilt in the background and reloaded in the browser — no manual refresh.

When an edit doesn’t compile or fails to render, the viewer shows the build error and keeps running: fix the code, save, and the model comes back. If the solid develop process itself is not running (or was restarted), the viewer shows a persistent offline banner until it reconnects.

Ports

The backend port is 8000 by default, configurable with the SOLID_NODE_PORT environment variable. The solid command loads a .env file from the working directory at startup, so a project can pin its ports there — and several projects can run side by side.

The Openscad viewer

If you prefer OpenScad as a viewer, use:

$ solid develop root --openscad

Solid Node keeps a .scad file of the tree up to date and OpenScad picks up the changes. To see animations, enable View → Animate and set fps and number of frames; note that reload is not automatic in Openscad while animating.

Hacking on the viewer itself

The web viewer is a React app served pre-built. To work on the viewer frontend with hot reloading, run solid develop root --web-dev, which proxies to an npm dev server (port 3000, or SOLID_NODE_FRONTEND_PORT). --debug-builder and --debug-web add verbose logging — see the command line reference.