Three Point Arch Tool (v004 and 2.80 version 012)

News: A new 2.7x version (0.0.4) and 2.80 version (0.1.2) were released, see this post for more information.

Downloads here

This Add-on allows you to create semi-circular arches by adding three points to your scene using the left mouse button. The first and second points you placed define the beginning and end of the arch, the third point sets the height and rotation angle of the arch. After placing the 3 points the add-on goes into an “extrude mode” where two extrusions are performed to set the arch’s width and length before exiting.

Note: It’s recommend that you snap the arch’s first two points to an existing vertex otherwise your arch may be created at a weird location. Escape and Right Mouse interrupt the arch creation and exit the add-on.

Install instructions:

  • Save the three_point_arch_001.zip file to your computer
  • In Blender, go to File > User Preferences > Add-ons
  • Remove any older versions of “Three Point Arch Tool” (if there are any)
  • Press Install From File and select the three_point_arch_001.zip file you just downloaded.
  • Enable the Add-On by clicking on the box to the left of Add-On’s name (Three Point Arch Tool)

https://i.imgur.com/jhxBzRR.gif

old demo gif

12 Likes

Hi nBurn,

Thanks you so much for your usefull addon for me, architect.
Good continuation and congratulations!
Spirou4D

Really helpfull Idea and user interaction!

Excellent stuff nBurn! Congrats!

And if i am not mistaking, all done inside a simple, non-macro modal operator. Very nice!

this is really great!

Thank you very much

BUffff, really usefull

nice work :slight_smile:

Very useful! Thanks!

Thank you nBurn… very very usefull interactive primitive draw tool.

This is a great tool – thank you.

Hi nBurn,
Well done !

Hi all, thanks for the replies.

Heh, actually part of my motivation for working on this was to see if I could make an “NP style” add-on without the complex macro setup (although the UI is nowhere close to being on NP-level yet). That registering and unregistering setup looks like it would be challenging to debug.

Smart and easy! Thank you!

Maybe you could make the extrusion switchable?

I feel like you’ve made a nice step forward in Blender CAD scripting, i can learn a thing or two from this one.

This Is Genius!

This would great if it could work
in edit mode by selecting vertexes
and then it would make the arch.

Do you mean switch the order of extrusions so you are extruding the length first and then the width? I think I ran into problems when trying to do that during development, but it might still be possible.

Not sure I understand. Do you mean just have the addon work in edit mode or did you have something more specific in mind?

I wanted to have an edit mode option available, but when trying to add it I found I would have to make a huge amount of changes to the code to get it working right. For now, having an Edit Mode option is on my list of “things to look into” after I get the core features done (nicer UI, button for the tool panel, etc).

I thought more of an on / off to use the circle also without an scale/extrusion…
Because:
I test it on two different blender application where i use different addons.
In one of them the arch tool extrusion work not correct.
I’m trying to figure out what it’s colliding with

I meant having a edit mode option.So that there would not be inner faces.

So an option just exit arch creation after the first set/loop of edges are created without doing anything else? I can upload an older version of the add-on that didn’t do any extrudes or scales if you want.

That’s odd. Well if you do find an option this add-on is conflicting let me know.

By inner faces do you mean faces with their normals pointed innward instead of outward? If so, I could have an option to have the add-on exit arch creation in edit mode with face selection active. That way if face normals were pointed in the wrong direction you could just tap AA to select all the faces and then hit CTRL + N to flip their normals.