I just wanted to say that Blender is art oriented. Nothing for stress testing or steel materials. No dimentions. Something in Blender could be 1 foot high or 1 mile high. It is all in Blender Units. I’m not saying I have a problem with that. I just was wondering if there was something like Blender as in it’s free and open source and professional, very professional, yet something like solidworks or autodesk that you can put in dimentions and test the product for stress and everything. I am trying openCASCADE because it looks very professional, and open source. I don’t know if there is a way to incorporate the less art-oriented side of dimentions/measurements and stress testing into Blender. I understand that the art-oriented side of Blender is what people like, but I was wondering if there is any interest in the Production side of Blender. I will be reading this but probably not replying unless someone asks a question, but I just wanted opinions. Also, let me know about openCASCADE. If this is violating anyting, or should be moved, admins please feel free to do that. Like I have any say though, right? LOL! Anyways, lets here some sides!
Lots of people want to push blender towards CAD. booleans and mesaurements would be a good start without reducing artistic ability.
however its not going to happen.
to be fully cad compliant you need all sorts of solid modeling techniques, history structures, advanced and good boleans…
also you need standards abilities and dimensioning, you need to be able to create 2D GA’s from 3d models…
i’d personally settle for
Dimensioning (as in knowing the distance of things)
Snaping tools
and booleans.
that would be the best start blender could make.
Alltaken
what does physics have to do with CAD?
As I understand it, CAD can mean both “computer-aided draughting” or “computer-aided design”.
When growing up I dreamt of becoming a car designer and watched a few shows on how cars are designed. Physics does play a part in CAD if you take it to be computer-aided DESIGN.
Just look at the advances in crash-test dummy simulations, crumple zones etc… All this is derived from very accurate raw data which initially must start at a draughting level.
I think somewhere along the line it’s all merged, so yes, physics does have quite a bit to do with some aspects and industries of CAD.
Just my views on the subject.
Peace 
Or it could just be a translation difficulty - physics as in the physical
LetterRip
I said that I probably wouldn’t post, but I will. I meant CAD as in Computer anded DESIGN, and the physics part comes in when you have a steel bar that you say “This end is fixed to something and on this end there is 500 pounds applied.” The software would then show you what the bar would look like after the force is applied, and how much it can take before it snaps. The software openCASCADE is nice, but you have to know C++, something I don’t know. I am looking for recommendations as to Professional looking (Blender is professional looking, Anim8or isn’t) and free software. It doesn’t have to be open source, but just free, as the sofware would just be used for fun, and not anything of importance.
there is a way to incorporate the less art-oriented side of dimentions/measurements and stress testing into Blender.
Well, in fact Autocad doesn’t have stress testing. Many expensive CAD software don’t have those kind of tools. The only software I know with those capabilities is Inventor by Autodesk, a very specialised and “end user” oriented software. Pure vertical CAD.
These capabilities would be possible in Blender, but first you would need to implement solids and second you would need to write many thousands of code lines to simulate engineering processes.
Solids in Blender (like in any other 3D package) is a difficult question because of solids philosophy itself, very PC resources consuming and not very real-time and animation compatible.
Regarding dimentions/measurements, they are all in blender, but it takes a bit more patience to work with them than with CAD software.
These images are made with Blender, not imported from CAD sotfware:
At school, I work with inventor, and it is really coming usefull to me.
Parametric design is very, very usefull. with parametric design, it is possible to let one deminsion dependant to another one.
So, if you scale an edge or face, or whatever, the dependant one(s) will scale just as much, or do something else you have specified.
One way to put blender’s artistic approach into perspective is to consider 3D Studio Max. AutoCad created Max to be used in conjunction with AutoCad. The Cad tools for design and construcion and Max for rendering photo real visualizations. Of course Blender falls cleanly into the second catagory. Export (with obj (until everyone starts supporting blender’s file format)) and render (near) photo realistic for the client or marketing or to show off your work or whatever.
OpenCASCADE looks really good, I hadn’t heard of the program before now. Have to read through their site. Parametric Nurbs? That would be excellent. Learning to use Cad programs is always so difficult though.
If this is all you’re after, you might look into Alibre Design Xpress. Its ad-supported “free” 3D parametric CAD, but doesn’t have the FEA capabilities you’re looking for. I doubt you’ll ever find free and “professional” FEA. This is because if you’re doing those kinds of calculations, you’re usually doing them for a reason, whether that be legal or functional or whatever, and intend to sell your design and make money with it. People who provide/author the software to do these calcs want a piece of that pie.
Another free possibility (tho its a 2D-only AutoCAD clone - no parametrics) is ProgeCAD LT. However, you should be able to take 2Ds created with this (like floorplans, for example) and import them into blender and extrude them out into 3D.
For CAD (particularly mechanical CAD) there is no other way! When the dimensions drive the geometry and when geometry can be driven by (or associated with) other geometry life becomes soooooooo much easier! (Take it from me, a 13-year AutoCAD veteran who made the swith to parametric (SolidWorks) 3 years ago: there’s no comparison! 
)
Actually, they took MAX and tweaked to play nicer with AutoCAD and called it 3D Studio VIZ.
Ah, crud. Open Cascade is for Linux? Another one on the backburner. 
Need to go see if Ubuntu has native ATI OpenGL drivers yet. Maybe next year. The desktop initiative is really taking shape up in Portland.
There have been lots of attempts to get blender steered in this direction, for example the old BlenderCAD thing & there’s a CAD script being worked on here.
It appears to be a set of open source CAD-related libraries for C++. Is this something that blender could take advantage of to provide some kind of parametric capacity?
In a lot of situations, two or more pieces of software work together, each one being “best at what it’s best at.”
For example, you might use a CAD or an architectural program to design an interior which will serve as a movie set. You can easily work in physical units, and you can take as your first input the two-dimensional blueprint file first done by the set-designer. You can take-off measurements with accuracy. You’re working in the familiar-world of the architect.
But now, when you want to make some images that look extremely realistic, or beautiful, or that represent the effects of lighting “just so,” now it may be time to move into the world of Blender. And when you are finished with that, you might take the image and move it to Gimp or PhotoShop, or you may splice the movie or animatic-reel together with Final Cut.
“One size fits all” programs are hard to manage. They tend to be “a jack of all trades and a master of none.” Programs, like Blender, which can import objects from many things (i.e. thanks to their built-in support for Python), prove to be much more versatile… as one part of the workflow and a very well-equipped part. Each specialist, including “us,” uses the tool suite most appropriate for their step in the workflow.
sundialsvc4: my thoughts exactly.
However, a line must be drawn somewhere, because too many programs in the workflow also slow it down. A prime example is EdgeCAM, a software I had to learn in school. This comes with about 20 different programs, one for designing the object, one for calculating the machining routes, one for writing the NC program, one for checking it, one for setting up communications ports, one for managing jobs, one for the toolstore, etc, etc…
Most CAD tools cost into the thousands… Blender is free, so yes, some minimal cad functionality would be nice. What I would like:
- dimensions, measurements
- snapping, all kinds: vertex, midpoint, center, tangent, parallel, etc.
- bevels
- booleans, including 2D (stuff like intersect two lines)
Maybe someday: solids, CSG, parametric modelling
Try BRLCAD,
and here is FEA software
http://www.freebyte.com/cad/fea.htm
With BRL CAD - a CSG/BREP modeler/render funded by the US Army and caelinux a FAE solver funded by the French goverment you have a complete and professional quality complete CAD design system.
LetterRip
I am hearing Solid Modelling is one basic thing in CAD software, so maybe I’ll try joining the Google Summer of Code thing and incorporating Solid Modelling and dimentions/measurements into Blender would be my project. Even though college is a couple years down the road, it might be a possibilty to work on this. Unless, of course, someone has incorporated these CAD tools before I reach college! 
Another thing to consider is that no one package can do all the engineering things you can think of. You can get some basic physics, but beyond that would involve an excessive amount of time and coding.
For example, if you want to model and test tires, there’s much more to it than just saying that a tire is a solid block of rubber. Or even one that has characteristics that vary across a curve. Modern tires are often composited in layers of specific materials. Testing the tire really requires a full-fledged application.
What about weather? That’s an entirely different can of beans than any standard physics package can give.
Aircraft, watercraft, industrial machinery, home appliances, etc. --there’s no way to have one program do it all.
But, maybe I’ve missed the point…?
I don’t want to have to download 300+ Mb of CAD code just to use Blender.
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Good Afternoon:
I´m a teacher of technology at a High school in Spain.
In the class we have computers with linux (guadalinex) and Blender is incluided. I use he scrpt BMG to explain gears a I´m learning the game engine to explain phisycs, forces, cinematics. Translate game to IPo is useful to do that.
Some boys are starting to study because blender it´s hard to learn and they want to do tuning cars running in the screen.
If the units of S.i. like meters o kilogrames are include in gameengine blender will a very useful educational aplication for simulations.
Yours:
El Cateto
Thanks for the second link 
Downloaded and burned CAElinux to a dvd. That’s a really nice live-distribution.
Not only does it have FE-solver programs, it also has a solid geometry modeller (Salome) based on OpenCascade. Been playing around with it, heres a screenshot:
Salome is an interface to:
- a solid geometry modeller
- pre/post processors
- FE analysis programs
If you want to do solid modelling with real measurements and proper boolenas for free, Salome is what you want , not blender