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To complement this, a collection of Blender addons to make CAD design with Blender even more enjoyable: https://github.com/EleotleCram/blender-cad-tools https:

To complement this, a collection of Blender addons to make CAD design with Blender even more enjoyable: https://github.com/EleotleCram/blender-cad-tools https://github.com/EleotleCram/blender-cad-tools

moffkalast 5y ago
If there was one thing I would love for Blender to add is to have a way to scale selections to a specific size. Right now there's literally no way to do it except splitting it out as a separate object and then doing it via geometry bounds. The ruler tool is also so hard to limit to a specific axis and a general pain to use. Like is it so hard to always draw some text for all 3 axis to say what the selection bounds are? I'm perplexed that none of the so called CAD plugins didn't add this as a first order of business, but they bothered adding something as useless as an outline renderer. When I need anything that's dimensionally accurate in Blender I have to set up and scale the critical parts in Tinkercad first, then import into Blender to finish it up properly ffs.
phkahler 5y ago
That is really great! I wonder if Blender would adopt some of these CAD features into the official software. Even animators must need to do more technical designs at times right?
- detritus 5y ago
  Problem with that is that they risk ending up with feature bloat, as much as I agree with you!
monkmartinez 5y ago
Those look awesome and I did not know they exist. Thank you for sharing! On another note, I would love a version of Blender for the iPad. Shapr3D is, imo, ridiculously overpriced for what it is. An OSS 3D creation environment with the Apple pencil would be amazing.
- anchpop 5y ago
  Unfortunately Blender is GPL and so can't be ported to iOS or iPadOS :(
  - outworlder 5y ago
    More specifically, because Apple won't allow GPL apps.
    - yellowapple 5y ago
      Only GPLv3 (due to the TiVoization clause), right? Or did they come up with some arbitrary reason to forbid GPLv2?
- starky 5y ago
  I don't understand what market Shapr3D is trying to target, it would be a great piece of software for doing quick designs for 3D printing when I don't need a full CAD solution, but the pricing is too high for anyone doing that. At the same time the extra cost to Fusion360 for professional work is well worth it for the extra features.
  - pdc56 5y ago
    Thanks for this. I just got a surface studio with pen and was looking for something like this but failed to find anything. I did the tutorial and it worked fine, but then when I started fresh I got a bug where I couldn't see any geometry until after I finished the pen operation, rendering it useless. What a shame. I'll try it again one day after they hopefully fix it
    - justinclift 5y ago
      In theory (!) Blender should work decently on a Surface Studio. :)
  - monkmartinez 5y ago
    I agree. I use the free version to noodle around, but I don't spend a lot of time on the models for a variety of reasons. I may be too used to the feature tree and rollbacks. Also, I am addicted to equations and variables for parametric designing. They have a cool app and I would pay $5 a month for it to be sure, but I am not going to spend $20 per month for it unless it nearly replaces f360, Solidworks, OpenSCAD, FreeCAD... I don't think it beats any of them right now. TinkerCAD is on the iPad and actually fun to noodle with FYI.

moffkalast 5y ago

If there was one thing I would love for Blender to add is to have a way to scale selections to a specific size. Right now there's literally no way to do it except splitting it out as a separate object and then doing it via geometry bounds. The ruler tool is also so hard to limit to a specific axis and a general pain to use. Like is it so hard to always draw some text for all 3 axis to say what the selection bounds are? I'm perplexed that none of the so called CAD plugins didn't add this as a first order of business, but they bothered adding something as useless as an outline renderer. When I need anything that's dimensionally accurate in Blender I have to set up and scale the critical parts in Tinkercad first, then import into Blender to finish it up properly ffs.

phkahler 5y ago

That is really great! I wonder if Blender would adopt some of these CAD features into the official software. Even animators must need to do more technical designs at times right?

detritus 5y ago
Problem with that is that they risk ending up with feature bloat, as much as I agree with you!

monkmartinez 5y ago

Those look awesome and I did not know they exist. Thank you for sharing! On another note, I would love a version of Blender for the iPad. Shapr3D is, imo, ridiculously overpriced for what it is. An OSS 3D creation environment with the Apple pencil would be amazing.

anchpop 5y ago
Unfortunately Blender is GPL and so can't be ported to iOS or iPadOS :(
- outworlder 5y ago
  More specifically, because Apple won't allow GPL apps.
  - yellowapple 5y ago
    Only GPLv3 (due to the TiVoization clause), right? Or did they come up with some arbitrary reason to forbid GPLv2?
starky 5y ago
I don't understand what market Shapr3D is trying to target, it would be a great piece of software for doing quick designs for 3D printing when I don't need a full CAD solution, but the pricing is too high for anyone doing that. At the same time the extra cost to Fusion360 for professional work is well worth it for the extra features.
- pdc56 5y ago
  Thanks for this. I just got a surface studio with pen and was looking for something like this but failed to find anything. I did the tutorial and it worked fine, but then when I started fresh I got a bug where I couldn't see any geometry until after I finished the pen operation, rendering it useless. What a shame. I'll try it again one day after they hopefully fix it
  - justinclift 5y ago
    In theory (!) Blender should work decently on a Surface Studio. :)
- monkmartinez 5y ago
  I agree. I use the free version to noodle around, but I don't spend a lot of time on the models for a variety of reasons. I may be too used to the feature tree and rollbacks. Also, I am addicted to equations and variables for parametric designing. They have a cool app and I would pay $5 a month for it to be sure, but I am not going to spend $20 per month for it unless it nearly replaces f360, Solidworks, OpenSCAD, FreeCAD... I don't think it beats any of them right now. TinkerCAD is on the iPad and actually fun to noodle with FYI.