Construction lines can easily be THE addon that creates another exponential leap forward in the evolution of blender, specifically for the CAD/engineering users. you’ve done an amazing job.
however i have had a lot of trouble with the core functions as listed below.
In the In orthographic mode, view axis or numpad 7, when adding a tape and or line, I click on a vertex Pressing X to stay on the X axis, pressing enter, typing in the measurement, pressing enter, and 1 out of 4 times it will create the line at a range of degrees lower or higher than the straight line it should be forming. ive played with entering measurements on the numpad and numrow, using different measurements, units, etc and nothing works consistently.
The other more egregious problem is that the plugin will stop working randomly after creating 5-8 lines. I have gone through this entire page and looked for and attempted any troubleshooting protocols, done the reinstall uninstall protocol, upgraded to current blender, back to previous etc and it is still behaving erradically. I am running a pretty capable pc on windows 10 and have been working in 2.9. Cant wait to get the stable version! Please let me know if there is anything i can do to help! this really has massive potential.
Hi Daniel,
Thanks very much for your message. It’s great to hear that. Though sorry to hear you’re having a couple of issues at the moment.
I spent a long time yesterday evening trying to recreate both of these issues and can’t seem to get CL to break or produce the same results. There’s probably some minor difference in the way that I’m doing things. If you have a moment would you mind emailing me a video of the problems? Then I can copy your exact process.
Did you happen to notice any errors in the console when CL stopped working?
Version 0.9.4 is currently in testing, getting ready for release (hopefully next week) but wanted to quickly show the new face cutting feature coming in this release.
You can now draw a primitive or line-drawn shape onto an existing face and Construction Lines will automatically add in the geometry needed to cut into the face.
Currently, this is using Blender’s extrude and extrude manifold functions. Neither does a great job of cutting all the way through. However, from what I’ve read, extrude manifold is due an update soon, which is likely to handle cutting the whole way through.
I look forward testing the new version. I have really big problems using it as it is now. It has problems with cutting faces even when splitting it from end to end. The line tool is also bad at following the cursors direction, especially when getting close to a edge. It also has problems finding the right place on the edge when trying to complete a straight line until it meats the edge. I find the Snap Utilities Line/Make Line tool (that comes with Blender) being better then Construction Lines even through it’s more limited. I find it better because most times the lines makes faces. It snaps fast to a edge close to the cursor. When hovering a mesh to make a cut it highlights the faces and edges. When it makes a cut it usually show that the face is split. Because of that I can see if a cut works. It makes it more easy to interact with the mesh. Construction Lines does not have to work just like that plugin, but I would be happy if it became more responsive and easy to use. When it comes to the Rectangle tool, I would like to see a “square” option, like when holding down a key, looking the size to a square. I find my words to harsh, but I feel I can barely explain as it is. I like the work that you have put in and the road you are taking with this plugin. Because of that, this was the first Blender plugin that I bought.
Thanks for the input Jimmy. Most of the points you mention with snapping (difficulty snapping a line to an edge when locked in a direction, etc.) have been solved in the new release (0.9.4 coming in the week). Sometimes the snap still runs away from the cursor a bit, when the edge is on an angle but it’s something that will be sorted soon and it currently won’t run away from the constraint points anymore.
Face cutting has just been improved, so hopefully, the issues you’ve had will be sorted. I’m looking into highlighting the closest geometry, similar to the way snap utils works but I want to do it in a way that feels and looks closer to normal Blender operations.
As to squares, if you drag a rectangle and type in a single number, without any commas, it will create a square based on that single value. I’ll look into adding a temporary lock when dragging a rectangle, which will keep to square dimensions. Thanks for the idea.
I’m working on Construction Lines every day, at some point, so it’s always improving. It’s still in beta, as you know, so there will be issues but I feel it’s becoming more stable with every release. This week’s release is mainly about fixing bugs and adding a few new features. The following release (0.9.5) will be a larger update, with improvements to object selection, movement, guide edges and will also have a new rotation system. This will be the full feature set for version 1. So after 0.9.5 development will only be focused on tightening up all the systems and making everything stable for a full first release. Then after version 1, I’ll begin adding new features again.
Thank you for your answer Dan. I have problems formulating my thoughts in my native language from time to time, English makes it a bit harder. I think your answers where good and deeper then my questions and thoughts. I appreciate that a lot. I look forward to try the next version.
When it comes to face cutting I think we always end up on making a hole. My mind wanders and ends up on two things. One is if one want’s to make a door, window or some other kind of hole, a thought is, what if there was a mirror drawing function that would draw the same thing on the other side of the mesh in a mirrored direction? That should make it more easy to cut holes in the face and add the missing parts or using the Extrude Manifold and cut away one or two faces with no destruction of a face around the hole. The other thought is, what if one could generate a new face from the lines instead of it cutting the face (as a option). Then using extrude on that new face shape, then do a boolean with it with the Blender tools? Those two things might make holes more easy without making holes or waiting for Blender to get better at it.
I have tested writing number to set size, works as it should. Thanks. Nice that you liked my idea. I got one more after reading your answer, the rectangle is drawn from a corner. A circle is drawn from the center. What if a circle could be drawn from a corner like from a invisible box or that a rectangle could be drawn from the center?
I have not used SketchUp in a while, but I’m also inspired vector drawing apps like Affinity Designer and Inkscape, the tools they have and the tools and functions I wish they had. I just bought CL Eraser, this time for £1 instead of free. I wish for you to have continues support so you can more easily make your plans come true and so you can feel appreciated. I’m affraid that us enthusiasts might be a bit demanding from time to time because of our ideas and problems. Things that originates with Blender that might or might not be related to your mission. So again, thanks for all your work and patience.
In most cases, that is also how I want to work. But sometimes I want different options. Especially with the circle. Being able to draw it from a corner would be a time saver from time to time.
Thanks very much, Jimmy, that’s kind of you to pay for CL_Eraser! And thanks for your comments of support. I appreciate all of the feedback and I can certainly take a bit of constructive criticism. I’ll always take on board the points people make, so keep it coming.
I’ve actually got drawing circles from a corner on my list, I use Affinity Designer too and it’s definitely a useful option to have. I agree with you and @cekuhnen that it’s good to have all options available, even if you don’t use it that way all the time. In the same way that sometimes I like to draw my squares/rectangles from the centre rather than from an edge (another option I intend to add).
I wrote my own extrude a while back which worked in the way you suggested (with booleans) and it worked well but then the Blender booleans were changed so it stopped working. I’ll see if I can get it working again with the most recent change to booleans. I’m still really hoping that the developers sort out Extrude Manifold soon, as it’s so close to working. That’s a clever idea with mirroring a face to the back of a volume, my reservation is that it would only work if the back face of the volume was exactly the same as the front. If it was curved, scaled or had some other geometry on it then you couldn’t create the mirrored face. I’ll continue to think about it though, as there might be a way to make it work.
Thanks again for the support, it makes a big difference.
Nice to know those options for rectangle/square and circle are coming. I like that you also are a Affinity Designer user.
The new boolean functionality looks promising. If you make a new try on boolean extrude tool, will it be it’s own add-on? With my mirror idea, I was only thinking about surfaces that where the same. I guess one could argue that it’s not mirroring if it’s not identicalon both sides. But mirroring the actions no matter what the mesh looked on the other side would be worth a lot more. Sad that it won’t work. That leads me thinking about deep cutting, laser cutting or sawing. What if a pen tool could be set at cutting a set depth, cutting through everything in it’s path? Or draw, make a action, set depth and cut? If that is not workable, could it be workable to select edges and use them to cut at a set depth? If depth cannot be set, could everything in the path be sliced through?
Sure. If there are more ways to support, share. I’d be happy to give support more times in the future.
I’m about to start testing on 2.91 so if the booleans work well then I might start using that for extrude. I’ll still keep an eye on the extrusion tool in 2.92 (if it looks like it will be updated for that version) as it should only be a few months away.
A lot of addon can cut trough the whole mesh now, most of them use “intersect ((boolean)” operator (like gridmodeler) for 2.9 we need to play with merge threshold (not very accurate for CAD tool) but 2.91 do it with co planar face very well.
I’d include the extrude function in Construction Lines rather than create a new add-on, as it would fit in with the existing tools. I’ll see how things work with the new booleans. It will be a lot easier to work with booleans, as they can tidy up the mesh after they’ve made a cut, otherwise I’d have to do that and it’s quite difficult to re-join all of sections that have been cut and make sure that the mesh is still maifold. Much easier to let Blender code handle the heavy lifting. As @Kouza_Nagi has just said, most use intersect booleans to achieve this.
Just to let you all know that Version 0.9.4 has just been released on Gumroad and Blender Market (normally takes a little longer to process on there). Feature list and bug fixes are below:
Construction Lines 0.9.4 Release Notes:
Features & Updates:
New feature to allow for circle, rectangle and line-drawn faces, to cut holes into existing faces. New geometry is automatically created to allow this to happen away from existing edges.
Big improvement to edge snapping, snap point no longer runs away from the cursor
Changed lower limit to guide scale in preferences to 0.0001
Guide edges now have a scaling preference. The value is from 1-5
New text display in the bottom left of Viewport to show which tool/action is currently running
Support now for Blender 2.9
Bug Fixes:
Fixed Arc direction snapping and locking
.(dot) on the Numpad now works correctly for decimal input (azerty keyboard issues)
Fixed issue with Construction Lines not working after loading a file which has been saved during Construction Lines use. A running flag was saved into the file, so Construction Lines thought it was still running
Fixed issue when creating a new object, deleting it and undoing the action multiple times. Construction Lines on occasion would still keep a reference to some deleted objects
Improved face finding and creation on existing meshes
Fixed issues when axis snap overrides snapping to a geometry point. These two snaps work together now
Calling undo whilst in edit mode will now remain in edit mode rather than object mode
Fixed issue when using imperial units sometimes failing with multiple digits before a decimal place, in numerical input
