After watching the video, it seems almost exactly the same as most CAD programs (at least the same as the one i am using, which is Autodesk Inventor)
I’m still not exactly sure what you want but i will try to answer some of your questions from my understanding so far.
Adding axis-aligned rectoids: The default “Add Cube” is not a huge problem, but I always end up having to thin it down on one side. I vaguely recall it’s not a big deal to add a new command to drop down a new primitive in Blender, but would there be a way to drop a flattened cube (rectoid) aligned against a plane? As an example, if I am in a 3d editor window aligned on xy, then I am looking vertically. I would hope then that it could take my grid snap to make a floor piece as thick as my grid snap, and something roughly 4 times as long and wide by default.
You don’t have to start with the default cube every time you open up blender, model the default floor you wish to start with when blender opens and then click “File > Save Startup file”.Every time you start up blender it will automatically load the floor model you made.
Adjustable grid snap: I know about the snap tool and it can be used to roughly move a selection along grid boundaries, and I can edit the grid in the 3d view properties–whatever comes up when you hit ‘n’ in the 3d editor. I was hoping to have grid snap be default default and adjust that snapping resolution with one command. Generally, I want to reduce the amount of overhead from changing this.
You can use grid snap by holding Ctrl with the default config, no need to toggle it on and off.If you want to toggle it you can press "Shift+Tab"You can also press and hold “Shift” with grid snap on to move your active in smaller increments.Pressing “Shift+S” will also give you a few snapping options.
Automatically move objects along axis when clicking roughly in their center: I currently have to press ‘g’ and the axis I want over and over and over again. The ‘g’ and ‘y’ keys are more in the center of the keyboard so I have to reach for them. This sounds anal-retentive, but it’s big deal for something I’m doing 3+ times per piece, in game levels that can thousands of them. The axis alignment would mean that if I am looking at the xy plane, dragging along the center of a selected object would start moving it either along the x or y axes, depending on the direction I drag. It would also move it in increments given by the grid snap.
You could always just use grid snap for this, it should be easy to see if an object isn’t aligned along an axis.alternatively you can just bound X, Y and Z to something else, a keyboard or mouse with macro support would be useful in this case if you have one.
Automatically resize faces along axis: If I drag the edge of an object with the mouse, I hope to resize along the face connected to that edge that is otherwise hidding from view. I am not literally selecting an edge in edit mode, but rather dragging from the edge of the rectoid and hoping it can infer I want to manipulate that entire side of it. This is a particularly tedious operation because I have to tab into edit mode, switch to faces if I haven’t already, adjust my view to get that face, hit g, select axis, and then move it.
Or you can press Tab to go into edit mode,turn off “limit selection to visible” (i have this saved as turned off by default), press “ctrl+tab” and select “face”,select the dot sticking out of the face you want to move (you don’t have move your view so you can see it, you only need to know where it is), hold “Ctrl” and then drag the face in the direction you want.
Sorry if i am a bit ignorant with the subject but perhaps those tips will help.Also erm… , do you model from the numpad axis orthographic views or from the user orthographic view?
