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I started using Blender around 2013 when we needed to make some exciting animations for a work project. I quickly grew to love it for its streamlined Jack of

by knolan 6y ago

I started using Blender around 2013 when we needed to make some exciting animations for a work project. I quickly grew to love it for its streamlined Jack of all trades approach to media creation and it’s breathtaking pace of development. It’s such an incredible piece of software and I would encourage anyone interested in working with 3D graphics and animation to jump in. There is a wealth of training material online. When you compare it’s basic workflows to other professional creation software such a as CAD, Photoshop the comparative bloat and lack of interface fluidity in the paid software is often jarring. It’s like comparing Vim to MS Word. For example in SolidWorks if you want to rotate the view to a top, front or side view you can mouse over to a widget up in the corner of the screen or more quickly press space and then click a button there to orient the view. But that window has to be closed with the mouse and not by hitting space again and oddly can be resized for no good reason resulting in a big empty mess on so many users installs. It’s sloppy and janky design in extremely expensive professional software. In Blender I just have to press 1, 3 or 7 on my numpad for front, side or top view as those keys correspond to X, Y and Z axes. Wonderfully intuitive and responsive.

amelius 6y ago
Would Blender be a good tool to do mechanical engineering (for manufacturing prototyping)? Or would a tool like FreeCAD/SolidWorks still be much preferable? EDIT: found an answer here, [1], but that was from 4 years ago. [1] https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53293/is-blender-actually-useable-for-engineering https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53293/is-blender...
- beering 6y ago
  That answer is still correct, which is that Blender's workflow and concept of 3D geometry is good for making nice pictures that don't need "correctness", but not what you want for mechanical engineering. FreeCAD tries to be like SolidWorks/AutoDesk Inventor, and I think you'll find the workflow much better suited for designing mechanical parts in a precise way. Last I tried FreeCAD, it felt pretty alpha quality, but that was a long time ago.
  - underdown 6y ago
    Not trying to disagree with your point, but the company I work for built a design tool on top of blender that feeds custom designs to our automated mill. The customer gets a high quality 3d render to approve before materials are cut & packaged. It seems to work well. Maybe we are an edge case.
    - justinclift 6y ago
      Are the items being cut all in planar sheets rather than organic surfaces? eg things like a box, or IKEA furniture, assembled from flat sheets after being cut out. Am kind of thinking Blender's lack of "proper" geometry might not matter much for that scenario. Not really sure how it could be worked around well for more complex geometry though. :)
      - underdown 6y ago
        Yes sir
  - xsmasher 6y ago
    Blender is not a professional CAD software, but "good for making nice pictures" is understating its abilities; as a hobbyist I've modeled a dozen or so objects for 3D printing and they slice/print just fine. There are even plugins to analyze models in Blender, and plugins for CURA to open blender files. https://daler.github.io/blender-for-3d-printing/printing/mesh-problems.html https://daler.github.io/blender-for-3d-printing/printing/mes... https://thopiekar.eu/cura/cad/blender/ https://thopiekar.eu/cura/cad/blender/
- virtualritz 6y ago
  I'd suggest Fusion360 for this. Solvespace or FreeCAD if you must use OSS software. It depends a lot how complex the stuff you plan to build is. Fusion360 is free for personal use so you can wait until you actually earn money with whatever you create until you buy a license.
  - coronadisaster 6y ago
    too bad it is Windows and Mac only
  - justinclift 6y ago
    > Fusion360 is free for personal use ... They've recently announced upcoming changes to that. Much of the Manufacturing (aka CAM) features are being put behind a paywall (US$60/month?), including some of the low-to-intermediate level ones like 4th axis CAM. :(
    - Youden 6y ago
      That's sad, do you have a link to more details?
      - justinclift 6y ago
        I think this is the correct link: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=Fusion_Extensions_extensions_manufacturing_html https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=Fusion_Ex... The change was mentioned to me by one of our local Makerspace members a few days ago, who was considering learning CNC and asking about machines. There's further discussion of the specifics (eg 4th axis) in the Fusion 360 forum somewhere. Found it a few days ago, but am not seeing it now. :(
        Youden 6y ago
        Hmm, unlike "5 axis", it doesn't say that "4 axis" is part of the extension, it specifically says "Rotary", which seems to be this: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=MFG-MULTI-AXIS-ROTARY https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=MFG-MULTI... On the "4th axis wrap toolpath" page, it doesn't have the same "this is part of an extension" warning: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-7FF25192-AED7-4230-92DC-E22ADF15D498 https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-7FF2... So I think (hope) that some forms of 4-axis machining are still free.
- q3k 6y ago
  If you're looking for a F/LOSS tool for mechanical CAD other than FreeCAD, try solvespace [1]. It's definitely good enough for simple usecases (especially 3d printing and lasercutting where there's good standalone CAM flows). [1] - http://solvespace.com/index.pl http://solvespace.com/index.pl
  - amelius 6y ago
    Cool, how does it compare to OpenSCAD? http://www.openscad.org/ http://www.openscad.org/ EDIT: found an answer here: [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9248701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9248701
    - q3k 6y ago
      Apples and oranges. Solvespace is closer to a traditional CAD package, with a layered constraint system, while OpenSCAD is more more mathsy and programming-oriented. For purely mechanical parts where I don't have to repeat myself a lot, I found solvespace to be a much better solution.
  - coronadisaster 6y ago
    looks like it was abandoned ...
    - mkl 6y ago
      No recent releases, but there's activity on GitHub right up to yesterday: https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace
  - tapia 6y ago
    That looks nice. The only problem for me is that it is GUI-only (it does not expose e.g. a Python API, and apparently they are not thinking of supporting that in the near future [0]) [0] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/375 https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/375
- TylerE 6y ago
  Solidworks is pretty much industry standard, for good reason. Blender isn't really appropriate for engineering. It's destructive editing and all a bit...wishy washy. Solidworks, by contrast, maintains a complete feature tree so you can see (and manipulate) every step that produces the final result.
  - MiroF 6y ago
    I don't really think there is an "industry standard" for this kind of work and solid works is far from the majority.
    - TylerE 6y ago
      It's a couple of years out of date, but see this: SolidWorks has >2x the share of any other player. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-each-major-CAD-software-company https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-each-major... Back when I was doing CAD work professionaly it was by far the most encountered software. Others have footholds in some industrys (aerospace, automotive) but for "general" product design SW is king.
      - chmod775 6y ago
        > SolidWorks has >2x the share of any other player. That's a disingenuous way to interpret that data. Just 23% market share is pretty far from being an industry standard.
        TylerE 6y ago
        How is it disingenuous? 22.6 / 9.2 = 2.45
      - Youden 6y ago
        That Quora post is a wrapper around CNCCookBook's 2015 survey [0], which is quite old. They've done followup surveys [1], the most recent of which was in 2018 [2]. The latest survey shows that Fusion360 is now the most popular package and grew quite rapidly since 2015. FWIW, Fusion360 is also the most popular CAM package [3]. [0]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/results-2015-cad-survey/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/results-2015-cad-survey/ [1]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnc-manufacturing-trends-surveys-market-research/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnc-manufacturing-trends-surveys... [2]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2018-cad-survey-results-customer-satisfaction-awards/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2018-cad-survey-resu... [3]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2020-cam-survey-whats-the-most-popular-cam/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2020-cam-survey-what...
- digikata 6y ago
  Onshape is nice, web based, built by the creators of Solidworks. Free for hobbyists.
- easygenes 6y ago
  Probably you want Fusion 360. Free for education or personal use, community driven updates. Think long term Autodesk wants it to be the future and the jank is all gone.
robomartin 6y ago
Solidworks: Try Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-8 You can also modify the standard views, add views and select between Isometric, Dimetric and Trimetric projection. The keyboard shortcuts are shown in the interface, which means it's easy to learn them over time. I appreciate your enthusiasm for Blender. I also like it. My kids are learning it now through Udemy. However, I disagree with regards to the comparison to other tools. All of these tools have evolved over time to serve specific needs and audiences. I've been using various engineering 3D CAD tools over the last 30+ years. There are some that can be painful to use and others which are easy and boost creativity. I would definitely place tools like Solidworks and Fusion360 in the latter category. Most of the tools that are painful to use are either open source or lack the financial backing (and profit motive/paying customer pressure) to evolve, refine and add useful features. That said, the collection of great FOSS 3D tools out there is amazing.
johnwalkr 6y ago
In Solidworks the equivalent is ctrl-1 through ctrl-7. Random zoom outs can be caused by a misplaced part or sketch entity that’s way outside of what the user intended, which is very easy to do by accident. However I agree it’s a janky mess. Using the advanced features is indeed like resizing an image in word.
zimpenfish 6y ago
> In Blender I just have to press 1, 3 or 7 on my numpad for front, side or top view as those keys correspond to X, Y and Z axes. Wonderfully intuitive and responsive. If you have a numeric keypad. None of my laptops have one; neither does my main machine. None of them have a middle mouse button either. The lack of those two things make an incredible amount of the Blender UX inaccessible to me. It's like making your site only work with Javascript and forgetting that some people have it turned off.
- Inityx 6y ago
  There are checkboxes in the settings menu to substitute the number row and alt keys respectively
- terhechte 6y ago
  You can also buy external numpads that connect over USB. I have one of those.
- aidos 6y ago
  I’ve been learning it recently on my laptop. Use the Emulate Numpad option in the settings. The other thing I’ve done is remapped ; to numpad-/ (I think, whatever it is that allows me to focus on an object). I suspect that ultimately you’ll just want a full keyboard because there are a bunch of variations that are probably useful to power users. The other thing is that my MacBook doesn’t really want to render anything without also burning the house down, so I’m looking to build a desktop machine anyway.
- atoav 6y ago
  Which is why there is an option called emulate numpad under Blender Preferences > Input. The same is true for the middle mouse button (Emulate 3 button mouse). They both work fine, the numpad one is one of the first things I activate. Not only is this option at the place where you would expect it to be, it is also not hard to find hints to it online.
- oefnak 6y ago
  Missing a middle mouse button is really easy to fix by using a €15 external mouse.

by knolan 6y ago

amelius 6y ago

Would Blender be a good tool to do mechanical engineering (for manufacturing prototyping)? Or would a tool like FreeCAD/SolidWorks still be much preferable? EDIT: found an answer here, [1], but that was from 4 years ago. [1] https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53293/is-blender-actually-useable-for-engineering https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/53293/is-blender...

beering 6y ago
That answer is still correct, which is that Blender's workflow and concept of 3D geometry is good for making nice pictures that don't need "correctness", but not what you want for mechanical engineering. FreeCAD tries to be like SolidWorks/AutoDesk Inventor, and I think you'll find the workflow much better suited for designing mechanical parts in a precise way. Last I tried FreeCAD, it felt pretty alpha quality, but that was a long time ago.
- underdown 6y ago
  Not trying to disagree with your point, but the company I work for built a design tool on top of blender that feeds custom designs to our automated mill. The customer gets a high quality 3d render to approve before materials are cut & packaged. It seems to work well. Maybe we are an edge case.
  - justinclift 6y ago
    Are the items being cut all in planar sheets rather than organic surfaces? eg things like a box, or IKEA furniture, assembled from flat sheets after being cut out. Am kind of thinking Blender's lack of "proper" geometry might not matter much for that scenario. Not really sure how it could be worked around well for more complex geometry though. :)
    - underdown 6y ago
      Yes sir
- xsmasher 6y ago
  Blender is not a professional CAD software, but "good for making nice pictures" is understating its abilities; as a hobbyist I've modeled a dozen or so objects for 3D printing and they slice/print just fine. There are even plugins to analyze models in Blender, and plugins for CURA to open blender files. https://daler.github.io/blender-for-3d-printing/printing/mesh-problems.html https://daler.github.io/blender-for-3d-printing/printing/mes... https://thopiekar.eu/cura/cad/blender/ https://thopiekar.eu/cura/cad/blender/
virtualritz 6y ago
I'd suggest Fusion360 for this. Solvespace or FreeCAD if you must use OSS software. It depends a lot how complex the stuff you plan to build is. Fusion360 is free for personal use so you can wait until you actually earn money with whatever you create until you buy a license.
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  too bad it is Windows and Mac only
- justinclift 6y ago
  > Fusion360 is free for personal use ... They've recently announced upcoming changes to that. Much of the Manufacturing (aka CAM) features are being put behind a paywall (US$60/month?), including some of the low-to-intermediate level ones like 4th axis CAM. :(
  - Youden 6y ago
    That's sad, do you have a link to more details?
    - justinclift 6y ago
      I think this is the correct link: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=Fusion_Extensions_extensions_manufacturing_html https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=Fusion_Ex... The change was mentioned to me by one of our local Makerspace members a few days ago, who was considering learning CNC and asking about machines. There's further discussion of the specifics (eg 4th axis) in the Fusion 360 forum somewhere. Found it a few days ago, but am not seeing it now. :(
      - Youden 6y ago
        Hmm, unlike "5 axis", it doesn't say that "4 axis" is part of the extension, it specifically says "Rotary", which seems to be this: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=MFG-MULTI-AXIS-ROTARY https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=MFG-MULTI... On the "4th axis wrap toolpath" page, it doesn't have the same "this is part of an extension" warning: https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-7FF25192-AED7-4230-92DC-E22ADF15D498 https://help.autodesk.com/view/fusion360/ENU/?guid=GUID-7FF2... So I think (hope) that some forms of 4-axis machining are still free.
q3k 6y ago
If you're looking for a F/LOSS tool for mechanical CAD other than FreeCAD, try solvespace [1]. It's definitely good enough for simple usecases (especially 3d printing and lasercutting where there's good standalone CAM flows). [1] - http://solvespace.com/index.pl http://solvespace.com/index.pl
- amelius 6y ago
  Cool, how does it compare to OpenSCAD? http://www.openscad.org/ http://www.openscad.org/ EDIT: found an answer here: [1] [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9248701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9248701
  - q3k 6y ago
    Apples and oranges. Solvespace is closer to a traditional CAD package, with a layered constraint system, while OpenSCAD is more more mathsy and programming-oriented. For purely mechanical parts where I don't have to repeat myself a lot, I found solvespace to be a much better solution.
- coronadisaster 6y ago
  looks like it was abandoned ...
  - mkl 6y ago
    No recent releases, but there's activity on GitHub right up to yesterday: https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace
- tapia 6y ago
  That looks nice. The only problem for me is that it is GUI-only (it does not expose e.g. a Python API, and apparently they are not thinking of supporting that in the near future [0]) [0] https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/375 https://github.com/solvespace/solvespace/issues/375
TylerE 6y ago
Solidworks is pretty much industry standard, for good reason. Blender isn't really appropriate for engineering. It's destructive editing and all a bit...wishy washy. Solidworks, by contrast, maintains a complete feature tree so you can see (and manipulate) every step that produces the final result.
- MiroF 6y ago
  I don't really think there is an "industry standard" for this kind of work and solid works is far from the majority.
  - TylerE 6y ago
    It's a couple of years out of date, but see this: SolidWorks has >2x the share of any other player. https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-each-major-CAD-software-company https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-market-share-of-each-major... Back when I was doing CAD work professionaly it was by far the most encountered software. Others have footholds in some industrys (aerospace, automotive) but for "general" product design SW is king.
    - chmod775 6y ago
      > SolidWorks has >2x the share of any other player. That's a disingenuous way to interpret that data. Just 23% market share is pretty far from being an industry standard.
      - TylerE 6y ago
        How is it disingenuous? 22.6 / 9.2 = 2.45
    - Youden 6y ago
      That Quora post is a wrapper around CNCCookBook's 2015 survey [0], which is quite old. They've done followup surveys [1], the most recent of which was in 2018 [2]. The latest survey shows that Fusion360 is now the most popular package and grew quite rapidly since 2015. FWIW, Fusion360 is also the most popular CAM package [3]. [0]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/results-2015-cad-survey/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/results-2015-cad-survey/ [1]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnc-manufacturing-trends-surveys-market-research/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnc-manufacturing-trends-surveys... [2]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2018-cad-survey-results-customer-satisfaction-awards/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2018-cad-survey-resu... [3]: https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2020-cam-survey-whats-the-most-popular-cam/ https://www.cnccookbook.com/cnccookbook-2020-cam-survey-what...
digikata 6y ago
Onshape is nice, web based, built by the creators of Solidworks. Free for hobbyists.
easygenes 6y ago
Probably you want Fusion 360. Free for education or personal use, community driven updates. Think long term Autodesk wants it to be the future and the jank is all gone.

robomartin 6y ago

Solidworks: Try Ctrl-1 through Ctrl-8 You can also modify the standard views, add views and select between Isometric, Dimetric and Trimetric projection. The keyboard shortcuts are shown in the interface, which means it's easy to learn them over time. I appreciate your enthusiasm for Blender. I also like it. My kids are learning it now through Udemy. However, I disagree with regards to the comparison to other tools. All of these tools have evolved over time to serve specific needs and audiences. I've been using various engineering 3D CAD tools over the last 30+ years. There are some that can be painful to use and others which are easy and boost creativity. I would definitely place tools like Solidworks and Fusion360 in the latter category. Most of the tools that are painful to use are either open source or lack the financial backing (and profit motive/paying customer pressure) to evolve, refine and add useful features. That said, the collection of great FOSS 3D tools out there is amazing.

johnwalkr 6y ago

In Solidworks the equivalent is ctrl-1 through ctrl-7. Random zoom outs can be caused by a misplaced part or sketch entity that’s way outside of what the user intended, which is very easy to do by accident. However I agree it’s a janky mess. Using the advanced features is indeed like resizing an image in word.

zimpenfish 6y ago

> In Blender I just have to press 1, 3 or 7 on my numpad for front, side or top view as those keys correspond to X, Y and Z axes. Wonderfully intuitive and responsive. If you have a numeric keypad. None of my laptops have one; neither does my main machine. None of them have a middle mouse button either. The lack of those two things make an incredible amount of the Blender UX inaccessible to me. It's like making your site only work with Javascript and forgetting that some people have it turned off.

Inityx 6y ago
There are checkboxes in the settings menu to substitute the number row and alt keys respectively
terhechte 6y ago
You can also buy external numpads that connect over USB. I have one of those.
aidos 6y ago
I’ve been learning it recently on my laptop. Use the Emulate Numpad option in the settings. The other thing I’ve done is remapped ; to numpad-/ (I think, whatever it is that allows me to focus on an object). I suspect that ultimately you’ll just want a full keyboard because there are a bunch of variations that are probably useful to power users. The other thing is that my MacBook doesn’t really want to render anything without also burning the house down, so I’m looking to build a desktop machine anyway.
atoav 6y ago
Which is why there is an option called emulate numpad under Blender Preferences > Input. The same is true for the middle mouse button (Emulate 3 button mouse). They both work fine, the numpad one is one of the first things I activate. Not only is this option at the place where you would expect it to be, it is also not hard to find hints to it online.
oefnak 6y ago
Missing a middle mouse button is really easy to fix by using a €15 external mouse.