I know from current versions of blender and atocad that those two dont compare.
But last night i was thinking its only a few decades back that some architects used a comodore 64, to make the first computer based drawings, given that in that time there was no github, and linux wanst available yet.
Since i am doing some paid requests of renders from autocad drawings of engineers and architects.
I wonder,… what if blender had some mousepointer changes, had some add ons for doing measure lines.
Given that blender already is such a rich and (open) programmable drawing environment.
By each update it gets richer, and more options… as it comes more and more future complete
Would blender at some point become an ideal tool to also create drawings with exact measurements ?
Currently blender isnt for those fields, but i just wondered what if…
What if blender improved on precise drawing capitabilites;… what would this result too
It would attract more professional people (a lot more then a view CG specialist, as there are more architects)
A large adaptation and it would become a more industrial standard.
Technical product libraries would become available.
Improved calculations for strength of constructions
Real fire simulations.
More key combinations and shortcuts
Exams and higher educations and trainings for blender.
More applications that merge real world and virtual world (those apps that use blender as starting point).
University acceptance of blender
With the last one, you also get university research into math/formula’s/3d… improved add ons.
There might be more synergy i think, game engine = > car crash simulation etc etc.
So… as we now enter the era of 3d printers where creativity will be a new industrial renaissance
Wouldnt it be nice if blender also would become a richer program for architects/engineers too ?
I wonder how you people think on this,
I read that some reason key developerd not very interesting, as main target is movie. You must implement that as it is free software project, get some positive feedback, and promote to merge with trunk.
The way that blender stores data is fundamentally different from a CAD application. It is possible to model very precisely, but the datastructure of polygons is not the same as the vector curves or CSG solids. It is possible to use it as a CAD platform, but it is not going to be anywhere close to competitive in that market. Inkscape is closer to a CAD program than blender is.
Not only that, but Blender’s floating point precision is less than you’d find in a typical CAD tool (and before you ask, I’ve done some rudimentary investigations on what it would take to convert all of Blender’s floats to doubles… it isn’t pretty).
So while you can model precisely in Blender, it’s still not as precise as… well, the right tool for the job. Blender is great at visualizing CAD data (especially if it involves animating any kind of deformation)… but as a raw CAD tool, the changes that would have to happen on the backend are just to extensive to be worth it IMHO.
I wish. I spent a good chunk of my life using autoCAD. From about 14-25 years old. Now I’m 32 and a blender NooB. Just grasping the concepts of modelling is so foreign to me.
Where I could make a bracket with some holes, welds etc in AutoCAD in about 5 minutes, in blender that would take me quite a while at this point.
Blender is rapidly improving, so who knows…maybe one day we will see some more cad-like functions? It’s possible…
I really miss the offset function from autoCAD. I’m sure there are other functions I miss as well but It’s been a while…
Its also two different approaches to modelling.
Autocad has the notion of mathematical primitives like circles, arcs etc. while blender is approximating this with mesh geometry. Its not easy to make a direct autoCAD function in blender other than making something that might imitate it.
You will have to wait a while to be able to export what you have drawn in blender to CAD tools.
And as far as architecture goes. That whole segment is moving towards BIM approach.
As far as I can see it would be better to work on a better integration with CAD tools.
Ie: Model something in autoCAD or Revit -> export or link to blender -> adjust scene in blender -> Render
Then if you update in autoCAD / Revit -> export or update in blender again -> you dont have to start from scratch applying materials / unwrapping etc.
This way you could focus on modeling the CAD stuff in CAD programs and visualize/animate/render/composite in blender
sketchup sits nicely between cad and blender if you wish something in between
as far as precision goes … you would have to model something very small in order to have problems in blender
you can also model edges by extruding points and export that to autocad as dxf and put dimensions there but it is easier in autocad because it is based on the concept of drawing lines and not modeling/deforming based on existing geometry.
drafting in autocad is easier than drafting in blender is easier than drafting at the paper board
I second @ejnaren here. There´s no way Blender can hope to even approach the sophistication/specialization needed to become a serious contenter in the CAD field. On the other hand, BIM is becoming so important in virtually all construction/life cycle/renovation/maintenance/infrastructure organisation that Blender might become a good tool for the visualisation part here. Also, BIM will probably (and hopefully) become ever more dependent on open standards, so that´s definitely a pro, as it seems Autodesk has all the other industry standards pretty well cornered. (And the range and capabilities of their apps are just amazing!) So, Blender as a final ouput stage for Revit? Good idea. As a CAD contender? Forget it.
I use both blender and autocad daily. The workflow is as ejnaren describes. I export my cad models as .stl, then I import them into blender and apply materials, lighting, etc.
Autocad is good at what it does, if a little clunky. You can definitely see the age of the program by how many layers of abstraction it has on top of itself. every button you click is just typing a function into the command line.
I agree with what’s been said so far. Blender has never been (and likely never will) be meant to include the right tools for real CAD (meaning CSG). However there are measurement tools for blender already if that’s what you need.
Exactly. The goal of autocad, or other cad packages, is to generate accurate technical drawings that can de used to build something. The best workflow for this is csg. Amd as it does need to look super good, one can easily automatically triangulate the surface of your design to produce a halfway decent image to render on the screen. The sole purpose of blender is to make stuff look good, which means you want to make the mesh directly. But this make csg hard and buggy. That being said, blender is useful to create a design if you happen to know how to use blender. The problem is rendering out to proper drawings. There is no easy way to use blender to create technical drawings. One could try freestyle, but that doesn’t produce pdf. Furthermore, there is no tool to add measurements to drawing. So however much I wish never to see either Solidworks or Inventor anymore, I’m afraid that’s not going to happen any time soon.
Allthough I can’t post an example, I made some decent 2D drawings with the help of the Caliper addon and Freestyle. Yes, programms like Autocad give much better results, but making designs in Blender and produce some 2D drawings with views, basic dimensioning and text boxes can be done. The caliper addon could use some refinement though.
i did this simple grid drawing with just the render to scale add-on from a few posts down ! all blender ! no caliper !
once you have a few libraries in Blender and you know how to operate with link/append it goes rather fast ! still no auto-updating dimensions and other stuff like cad but gets the job done in a pinch !
There are some interesting architectural addons that have been popping up recently. So there is definitely an interest of moving Blender towards that direction .
I certain believe in your dream and I think its completely doable. The problem is not so much the coding itself but that these things are specialised and you need people who are specialised on the field. So I will advise you what I always advise , learn to code and start adding those features in small steps. Learning python is not hard, neither is the Blender API. I am sure also the existing addon makers could use a hand to make their architectural addon tiny bit better.
These things dont happen in a day or out of blue. They take smell stops, adding this small thing here, that tiny thing there and after years you have mature features that people start to use regularly.
So yes Blender can add these features, it only needs more coders to do so. Coding is not for coders, coding is for everyone. We can all help Blender move forward.
there is a custom made SVN with CAD features but you have to pay for this SVN official version!
there are more and more addons added to work with 2 D CAD like drawings
so it is getting better over time
the main problem is with high precision mechanical model using precision lower then 0.001
cause inside blender all vars are defined as single float and doing calculations with these values
there was a note by one Dev at blender that blender could be build using double precision but I never build it so cannot tell you much about it !
but this would slow down blender and would use a lot more memory too!
I tried to import the default cube thru fbx a while ago. Autocad said me that some sides were not flat and drew me triangles after converting to solid.
yes accuracy is a problem in blender only if you model something very big or very small ( solar system or transistors ) for architecture, furniture and that sort there is no problem
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It’s opensource and actively developed… any thoughts?
FreeCAD has come a long way. It is actively developed by Yorik (and others) and he is focused on the architecture part of it. He is working with ifcOpenShell to make it an alternative in BIM world.
