Mechanical Blender

Nobody said that Blender should be a real CAD-System, there is also no need for parametric modeling. But adding some contrains with units, like an angle between two faces or a distance between two objects would be great, like it is shown in the short videos linked at post #1.
For working in CAD I have my Software, for rendering images and animations of complex assemblies created in CAD I use Blender.

The process going from something created in other software (cad) to get final outputs rendered with blender, needs some works. So, if some changes are then requested by up levels (boss, customerā€¦) you must then repeat the process, if not possible to reuse, of course.

In the same way most users do not use all parts of blender, cad features and workflows will not interfere at all.

Iā€™ll perform a patch for UCS and submit it. Letā€™s see if I can succeed :wink:

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That will be awesome
I am ready to vote for this feature by two hands!!

let us know if you can get the UCS to work
would be very nice indeed
been asked so many time before

but would this work for all aspects of blender or only modelling
and not rigging bones anim ectā€¦

any idea when this will be submitted ?

the only other major things I would like to see is a BL with double precision to work with CAD
at least be ore compatible

donā€™t know if this would be possible to do that from a user preference or only way is with an independent built using double precision vars
Can always ask questions to Ideasman
already talked about that a few years back !

thanks
happy bl

Sorry about this really late reply!

At the moment UCS is not still working in 2.8, but i think Iā€™ll achieve this milestone. It should work for all aspects of blender as is done in transform code, this is the beautiful part :wink:

About double precision i blender i think itā€™s almost and impossible dreamā€¦ who knows! should be of course a separate build with the aggravating of saved files not being compatible with bf-blender.

I have started (lots days after i would like to) to port things to 2.8 but first i decided to change the way is developed, and Iā€™ll do things based on diffs files with help of a deploy script. At the moment is a bash file, so itā€™s only valid for Linux machines, as you may know I work on Debian. Apply patches dynamically is easy, but i would like to be applied checking dependencies with other patches, so a simple program is needed.

Iā€™ll also share some things in patreon

Lets see!

did you have a chance to talk to some of the Dev on 2.8
they might be able to help
and may be integrate this UCS in 2.8
which would be great news

but also talk to them about this 16 bits things
many peoples have complaint about this difference with CAD

hope you can come up with a win 10 version soon

did you look at other free soft to use already made special functions for
curves and surfaces
we do miss a lot of tools for that and would help a lot ot make it more CAD compatible

happy bl

*.step Import would be great, I think C4D has a cad import. I do a lot of mechanical engineering visualization and working with *.stl or *.obj is not the best wayā€¦

Hi,
I sorry do interrupting your technical conversation I have a question I could not find an answer to anywhere else. I found mechanical blender while searching for user friendly CAD tools, I found your website and got really excited because it was just what I needed. I downloaded latest package from download page (08-03-2017 - ff016f7 w/cycles) on my ubuntu computer only to find out that running it is next to impossible! Many libraries required by mechanical blender are outdated and hard to track downā€¦ If you forgive me asking, are there plans for releasing more recent builds? I donā€™t mean release as in 1.0, I mean next test build but based recent blender revision ?

As youā€™ve already noticed the build is quite old, and there has not been any interesting commits there. Iā€™m trying to get some time to keep alive, and working with current bf-blender.

Thanks for your interest in the project!

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Hello every one
Please tell me how can I install Mechanical Blender. Iā€™m absolutely a beginner.
Thanks

Hi, I guess the project is dead, it was a fork of Blender.
Check Precision Drawing Tools, it is included in Blender 2.90.
Open Preferences > Addons and search for Prec
More info: https://devtalk.blender.org/t/making-an-add-on-for-precision-drawing-tools-cad/8637

Cheers, mib

My understanding is basically that this (now, more than four year old) project contributed tools and ideas that were then incorporated ā€“ cherry-picking the best ā€“ into the main-branch project. This happens a lot in the open-source world, where a side-branch effectively does ā€œR&D.ā€

Hi again!

Yes, the project as was, we can say itā€™s dead. But I got some time to apply on it, this time as an addon, after some talks on people, here, and in other places.

So, i expect to show and share the development soon :wink: Just started with blender Python to achieve something similar to what was achieved modifying sources :stuck_out_tongue:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/47662428

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I managed to place linear dimensions, and implementing the solvespace to solve this dimensions constraints.

At first point i decided to use a Fake vertex to control dimension position, and use the internal select feature to select the dimension. But i do not like the idea. Also i didnā€™t like to be always aware of vertex count, in case use had deleted one of the vertices.

so i started to modify blender sources to allow the add-on achieve this without creating new procedures.

So, this time will be a mix, with the hope that this feature could be more easily adopted by blender. Anyway being an add-on, simplifies keep things working, if only some patches must be applied.

https://developer.blender.org/T86191

Iā€™ve just summited a first differential (not finished), so anyone could give advice on development to be more easily included.

To not interfere here, added a post related to operator handlers

Another thing iā€™ll develop once finished the operator handlers , is this one

In this case, and easy workaround could be adding an operator for select, but if you as user can select vertices, why not dimensions (or anything) in the same way?

As you can see iā€™m focusing on things i need to achieve mechanical blender as addon being efficient and easy to use by the user, with similar capabilities that were achieved.

Support this patches, so could be included on bf-blender, i think more people could be interested on it.

Thanks!

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After some time spend on operator handlers, iā€™m able to select dimensions in a ā€œnative wayā€, just click having the Select Tool Active, and apply only the Solver only when user is moving mesh data, without need to make checks in the background. Previously was doing it on a draw callback (!!)

:crazy_face:

Great! And i do not need a fake vertex anymore :wink:

you can download a test build for testing the feature (focused to add-on developers) on GraphicAll. If you think it should be included in BF-blender releases, support it! Iā€™ll implement any changes or modifications required by blender developers.

Now iā€™ll spend some time trying to get a ā€œenable select dimensionā€ icon next to the select mode options (Vertex | Edge | Face). Main issue here is that from addon-side we can only add things at begging or at the end of the menu / tool bar.

As mechanical blender will continue being a custom build, i could just modify and apply a patch, but i prefer working on things trying to get better addons in blender in a collateral way on this development. Focusing in this project only, if the feature itā€™s not included on official releases, with a single patch, i can cover more than one usage, so it gets easier to maintain.

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is there some sort showing the latest features
to learn these new tools ?

hope some of these new things are added in new release
would make it easier for everybody working with CAD dwgs

thanks
happy bl

There are not new features yet on Mechanical Blender, iā€™ll upload a build on graphicall and do a video when linear dimensions working as expected.

The features pointed on last posts are technical, (non visible from a user side)

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glad you are continuing on this project
when do you expect to get a new version ?

thanks
happy bl