May I suggest using the metric system? 
Martin
May I suggest using the metric system?
Martin[/quote]
tuche 
I was talking about this before (with slikdigit, I think), and I believe that things came down to an issue of structure. Blender, as it currently stands, doesn’t have the structure to do parametric data. That is, when Blender makes a sphere (just talking meshes now for simplicity’s sake), it stores it as an array of vertices that connect to give the approximation of a sphere. Your typical CAD program only stores the object’s center and radius. The display is the only part that’s an approximation… this is how you can get exact measurements. It’s a totally different way of approaching the problem. That’s why booleans are nicer in CAD/solid modeling systems and are totally ass in many polygon-based systems.
Adding solid-modeling to Blender would be of the same (or more) complexity as adding full NURBS to Blender.
At least, that’s how I understand it. Feel free to correct me if I’m mistaken.
I’m an artist and an architect-type. Like Alltaken. I must use two sophisticated programs (with thousands of different nuances each) to do my job. Blender and TurboCAD overlap functionally in lots of ways. I have pondered how CAD functionality could be added to Blender using plugins. I don’t know Python or C++, but I could contribute significantly at the specification and documentation level.
The evidence available suggests to me that there is not enough interest in CAD functions for Blender to be worthwhile. Am I wrong?
no i don’t think you are wrong.
the community as it stands is a hobbyist field without any goals or desire to become more than what it is now.
people here don’t realise that CAD features (solid modeling) will benifit everyone here, why don’t they realise this? because they have never used them.
if someone put in some basic solid modelling tools, then everyone would be hooked pretty quickly.
Alltaken
hey alltaken if you provide me with links(im too lazy to look and you are to engrossed in solid model not to 
) to freeware CAD that has solid modeling I will see if get hooked and also other ppl might get intrested and then you have a sizeable army to pester the blender ppl with. 
[quote=“Alltaken”]
no i don’t think you are wrong.
the community as it stands is a hobbyist field without any goals or desire to become more than what it is now.
people here don’t realise that CAD features (solid modeling) will benifit everyone here, why don’t they realise this? because they have never used them.
if someone put in some basic solid modelling tools, then everyone would be hooked pretty quickly.
Alltaken[/quote]
The question is not there I think. Sure everyone would love such feature. The question is: Is it worth the time to program that stuff, it might not be as easy as you think, or maybe it is, but anyway blender’s modelling programmation isn,t the same of a CAD program, so adding in solid modelling could possibly a hell of alot of trouble. Like a redesign of the whole code. It might not be also, I just remember that some feature could not be added because of that. You need to see it this way…
As you say, blender is free, most of its users are young. It’s mostly certain that the user do not plan on using this as a job or watever, most are too young to think about things like that or they just understand they’ll have to switch one day or another. That’s not kind of bad…sure it would be cool if blender become the standard for 3d…but I don’t think it will ever happen. Blender is designated to get people in 3d, fast, free and to make it simple. If people keep using it for job, then it’s great, but I think most of us understand the need to use another program to get into the industry…
anyway it’s my point of view…so yes I would like solid modelling…but I don’t think it’s soo urgent…
Blender aims to a lot of fields…It’s very hard to be pefect in all of them. Even specialized tools, once you get really in depth (oe: professional field; you not only need the work done, but need it prety fast, fully featured, and even compatible with standards. A nightmare if any of those aspects is failing.)
I have spent long time waiting and hoping for the joint pinning feature, when finally Harkyman explained me the internal problems to do that. And I understood, so saw best for me was purchasing a software of the height of XSI (I could never afford Max price)
This point is hard to reach for blender in a single area (ie,video game art, or render, and somewhat Blender aims to both, though maybe more to rendered projects ) , so even crazy to expect it compete at pro level in every field it aims. I have realized this too late. (well, never is too late if conclussion is good)
Instead of wishing Blender be something just a bit bellow Max for videogames, I bought a very pro tool that does the main things that Max does in that field. And keep Blender as a joy tool that does some stuff in a more clever way, though could not compete. Same way as I use a free tool that is clearly aimed for organic modelling, and that many pro use in their job (I did, fps games, and some hi res), Wings3d.
Now is suggested even a new area (when even i think is not covering -professionally speaking- the two main areas I was seing it was aiming at hi res (mainly) and some for gaming ) …and I guess it’s all just too ambitious, disconnected with reality, in some aims/hopes I read. It’ll constantly make you unhappy about it.
I have decided to use each thing for what is good…ultimate unwrap, wings, blender, xsi… I think is better. And get used to format conversions and not hope Blender will make the capuccino coffe too
As said, not even the industry standard package are so ambitious, with way load more resources (money, people hours, number of ppl in dev teams…) behind them. Max does not aims to cad stuff. Autocad does not aim to gaming or hi res movie rendering stuff. Etc.
I mean, the idea that Blender is a very nice tool fo rsomeone wanting to make art at home, should be considered as the reality more frequently…the wall you find in a company with most bosses saying no to use othe rthing than Max or Maya, is not the only one wall. The worst come when you actually realize you can’t easily and quickly make a lightmap (dunno if some of u kno Gile[s] radiosity lightmapper…worth a look, I have it, too. ) or the mountain of other things that professional activity requires, and quicly, or ur questioned very fast in your job, you get the sack, bang… out to find a job again…
The more we understand Blender is just that, a wo nderful tool for the artist hobbyst, and if it ever evolves to these standards of today, Max, and Maya, wil have not stayed with arms crossed,(btw, the standards would have raised a lot) they’ll be eons away, forward, as for them is a surviving question. You will be able to compete with the Max and Maya we had today, in that future, not with the future one of those days to come. Unless a huge army of coders may come to help the most surely overloaded excellent coder that are working for free for all Bledner comunity.
These packages make normal maps internally, have character studio bundled, mental ray bundled, have terrificily powerful nurbs (Maya) , and such an etc that one person have it hard to compile a list…All that they had an strong need to make it, not a wish or desire, very full pressure for market demands…Is a different thing. And also, I have been at 3 of those companies…is WAY less enjoyable to do art there than at home, in my experience (typical company over pressured, crazy milestones as an everydaything, never rest, nights working till u’r really broken…)
That is…Blender artwork is produced most often in hobby time (the guys posting to be using Blender cause their bosses allowed, for what I read of tehir experience with it all, it’s clear to me they had much more “human” bosses that I never ever had…I truly envy them for that…But trust me, is far from comon. ) , and u notice that. In a game terrible artwork errors I spot all the time. No time to fix, gamers often don’t notice, but another artist do…rush,rush, rush…you end up hating it all.
So is not a bad world the un-professional one… It’d be nice if yet though, with feet in the floor ;), some of the pro features were added, but just…imho, those like me really wanting more power, better dig o free land or comercial if they can, a tool that can do what they want for the area of specialization, like in my area did XSI, they’ll stop wanting Blender to do godlike things… If now I sometime see a joint pinning feature, I’ll test it and explain in game engine froums how to use it, as done with other blender stuff, but wont be picky about how it was coded, as I have xsi.
Reason why I suggested those free cad links I did put. DXF import is already there, recently improved in a build… As so your post, was havijng a look at these things… there’s that freecad thing at sourceforge.net, open source…they do that parametric thingy, but don’t ask me as I don’t know a word bout cad. Also found things like instacad (sadly that 2.0.x version gives fortunecity error, but I found 1.0 available in several free depots and downloaded it.Havent tested yet. ) http://members.fortunecity.com/vincentyu2003/
or cadstd lite(free, usable), only 2d, but dxf support, and seems very good. (I don’t know cad, but I know a bit of traditional technical drawing)
http://www.cadstd.com/
another, that also reminds me a lot of the traditional technical drawing I had to learn to teach it.
http://users.pandora.be/desi-iii/index.html
another 2d one (gpl)
http://www.ribbonsoft.com/qcad.html
free-cad has 3d too, and is open source (you may even combine one of those kick ass 2d ones with this, maybe, I just dunno) It is based in python and don’t know what more.
http://free-cad.sourceforge.net/
sketchboard…
http://sketchboard.sourceforge.net/
lignum cad…
http://lignumcad.sourceforge.net/doc/en/HTML/index.html
Is only my two cents, just expressing my opinion, I hope I can…
well i do agree with your POV extrudeface.
my perspective is i’m not expecting Blender to be a CAD package. and not a master in that field.
a cad program needs to have these features.
A) 2d sheet midelong tools
B) text and layout tools
C) 3d 100% accurate nurbs, and solid modelling capabilities
D) export to most indutry standard 3d printing formats.
but most CAD stuff from what i think is not needed, we are not expecting blender to be designing aerospace machines.
however being able to do things like Arcivis, and 3d modelling visualisations is IMO a field that blender could excell in, and really make a huge dent in the market.
from what i understand now, this would also give full benifits to artistic modellers.
it would capture a good percentage of the CAD market who are not designing for manufacture, rather are designing for presentation and visualisation (but need to do it accuratly)
but i do agree, blender is currently not specialised in one area, and to be honest i like it being pretty broad. i use features from all aspects to pull jobs together.
Alltaken
CAD stuff wouldn’t really have to be intergrated into blender persay; it would really have to be tacked on. A completely different object to nurbs and mesh’s. I say this because it simply wouldn’t work with mesh’s and nurbs for an artists sake and nurbs for a technical drawers sake really need different workflows. I suppose CAD functionality could be tacked onto nurbs, but I don’t think blenders nurbs are currently strong enough. Anyway, weren’t we meant to get better nurbs sometime soon, or did I miss the news?
If you really want accuracy you can always punch the ‘n’ key. Not the best solution, and not a very good workflow for technical drawing. But it does work to a point(and yes, you can use it in nurbs to create an accurate circle that you know the radius off).
I used the ‘n’ key to make a very accurate model of my house(just the layout of all the walls and the roof and floor straight from the plans), it worked fine, it just took so much more time than freestylin it.
LOL i just noticed that my university teaches all the students this 3d CAD app by printing off the tutorials from the companys website and giving them to students as an assignment.
i find that very funny.
and i’m gonna save myself a heck load of cash by not taking that course 
Lived, no i am not really talking about nurbs, although its a part of cad for curved surfaces, the main thing is “solid moidelling” which yes, is another type, like metaballs, nurbs, mesh’s … its basicly a totally new modelling technique.
Alltaken
I googled, but to no avail. Mind sharing this “solid modeling” phenomen knowledge with us unenlightened ones ;)?
Damn! I thought comparing Blender with 3dMax is like comparing apples with oranges… but what the heck would you call Blender vs Cad???
I think it is a very difficult task to put seriuos CAD functionalities in Blender’s architecture without bloating the program. CAD is not just about buildings, but it should contain vast libraries about every nuts and bolts and so on. It should have drivers for plotters.
Personally, I think that the few programmers that we have are better off spending their time improving Blender as a modelling/ render tool. Blender is way behind the current developments already. We still don’t have a hair generator (I know I know… Ripsting and Beast) or cloth simulation, or mesh compression etc etc. The upcoming distrubuted rendering (way cool by the way) is a 20 year old technology (Siggraph 1984). So I think we should catch up on those Siggraph papers. Implementing CAD in Blender will sastify most of us who want to make mechanical models, or building and stuff, but it will irritate the real CAD users. And then you’ll get those dumb Blender vs autoCad (Autocad is how many years old?) threads.
I don’t compare Blender to Max, i just pointed out the 3D Studio Max and 3D Studio Viz case.
2 differents packages for 2 differents aim.
It doesn’t matter what 3DSMin can do or not.
anyway, i agree with you Toontje about one thing:
I think that the few programmers that we have are better off spending their time improving Blender as a modelling/ render tool.
I’d add: Animation
I recently hit this wall with GIMP vs. photoshop. I’m going to order creative suite this week sometime.
Yeah, I understand what your talking about I’m about half way through an engineering degree(well, I’ve defered to do 3d animation because I dislike engineering and wanted to explore other options before it was too late). I’ve used a few cad programs and yes blender can’t even think about competing as it is(for cad purposes that is). However people are all wining about how you can’t accurately measure stuff in blender when you can, thats all I was really pointing out. That, and what you mentioned then. You wouldn’t intergrate it into the current moddeling systems, you would add a new modelling system that could co-exist through conversions.
Me, I wouldn’t really like to see blender go down that road though. I mean solid modelling would be nice tool to add to the arsenal, but it isn’t needed. I wouldn’t use a cad program to produce a short film or game content, and i wouldn’t use blender to produce accurate designs for real life objects and simulations.
A lot of other people here seem to feel the way I do. I would much rather see blender get better at what it does than try and accomidate everybody and fail to do anything really well.
Alright… I’m going to make an attempt to sum up the arguments here.
For adding CAD modeling techniques:
- Blender could benefit from some CAD modeling properties.
- Blender would be capable of being used for many more things if it had CAD capabilities
- Blender would be more usable in the professional realm
- Blender would become one of the “real players” (implied by the title)
Against CAD integration/wary of it:
- Why add CAD modeling? Blender is for animation, modeling, and presentation.
- Wouldn’t this require a massive rewrite of a billion different functions?
- There is the possibility that Blender could lose its “cleanness”
- Could Blender, while still being Blender, even have the capability to integrate CAD functions?
Do I have this right?
As I see it, the question is would there be enough benefit in having some “CAD tools” to justify the effort of coding them in. They sound nice to me, but I’m not a coder so I defer to the experts on this issue.
I would only want them if they could be added economically, without detracting from the rest of the project.
Yeah, that seems to summarize things pretty well.
IMHO, Blender development should be directed more towards the ‘traditional’ modeling/animation/rendering paradigm. It might be more useful to focus on more robust and extensive import/export than CAD features.
I agree with the notion that it would be better for Blender to 'team-up" (whatever that means) with a dedicated free/open-source/cross-platform CAD package (does one exist…was one mentioned that I missed, sorry if thats so).
Many arch-viz types who use Cinema4D model in other packages. 3D Studio was originally intended as a complement to AutoCAD.
Again, just my 2 cents.