Anyone who can tell me if there are tutorials or websites related to product design with blender? I think of modeling of machines for manufacturing or packaging products or similar objects.
thanks
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If you have looked at the various blender galleries, you will see that it is capable of rendering anything you can imagine. While there are some excellent scripts available, the biggest drawbacks when using blender for product design are accurate dimensioning and file export. If and when more academic institutes realize and utilize blenders potential, these problems/work flow bottle necks could, I’m sure be easily addressed.
Bogey,
product design student/ jack of most trades,VD,Scar and Bar
ps, one day I will have to try writing a tutorial.
yes, i know blender can produce some excellent rendering outputs (in the right hands). In my (or in this) case I don’t really need accurate dimensioning 'cause I only want to draw by a reference photo in the background and then spin or extrude (or whatever function I need) the related curve and/or object(s) and do the next steps to complete the model. Therefore I think it’s not necessary to have an accurate dimensioning (don’t know, or am I wrong?). Nothing the despite, which scripts do you mean (and are compatible with 2.44) are useful for product design?
And: maybe anyone who know tutorials about product design or “mechanical” design (or should I say “non-organic-design”) with blender? I’ve already searched the web and related sites for a while but most tutorials are about organic or car modeling and nothing specific about product/mechanical design.
thanks
This is a recent quality tutorial submitted by brian.
It covers many of the modeling techniques that you will probably need.
http://www.3dplumbing.net/tutorials/flange/
For dimensioning search for “caliper script” in the python scripts forum and there are others for calculating volume, and surface area. So far I haven’t checked which work with 2.44.
Of course another long winded way is simply draw your own arrows, and add text.
There are toggles for edge length,area etc. Snap too tools have recently been greatly improved.
If the product is as you say simply a concept I cant see accurate dimensioning being relevant, but if it is for output to rapid prototype machine, or to produce tooling, then these become critical.
Anyway there are numerous excellent tutorials and scripts if you search the appropriate forums.
hope that help a bit.
Bogey
ps, im still crashing blender while I learn to work with the new composter nodes
Thank you for your help. The tutorial is a first step in the right direction. But as you already mentioned if I would model for a concrete project where exact dimensioning is needed blender maybe very difficult to handle? OK, maybe I should simply begin to experiment with my reference photo and to search for some useful scripts.
SP3 has been looking into the problem for me, and it? says groove is in the heart.
ps, I totaly agree
pps, can you please tell that penguin to keep its beak away from my records
SP3,- fish?
pps, does anyone know what the markets like at the moment,
for stuffed penguins.
foot note, first law of product design - know your market
SP3,- any chance of a kebab then?
I’ve been using Blender for a couple of years learning from tutorials and other posts on this forum. Part of my job is product design and the tooling that goes with it. Typically I used AutoCAD and Solidworks for all of the design process. More recently though I have found blender to be a much quicker program to quickly develop general arrangements and prove the design concept. What’s good about blender is most of the tools that are needed to draw with precision are hidden somewhere within the program.
Over the last few weeks I have been quietly putting together a tutorial aimed specifically at using Blender for precision modelling, a sort of beginners guide for engineers. I wasn’t going to publicise the tutorial until the last section was complete but it sounds as though you might find it useful now. The tutorial goes through the process of creating a 608 Ball Bearing; the type used in skateboards. I still have the last section on creating layout drawings from the model to finish
[http://www.rab3d.com/tut_blender.php)
The 608 Bearing tutorial is at the bottom of the page.
robbur this looks like the beginnings of an excellent tutorial, and and I must say its nice to see someone with a realistic grasp on tolerances.
SP3 says, he’s been to three lectures on bearings now, and he still dosent know what a cage is.
Shut up and get back in till the Taxi---------- turns up.
hello robbur, thanks for your comprehensive tutorial about aspects of product design with blender. Very good and very useful for me (think for others too)! BTW, are all of the objects in the gallery of your homepage modeled and rendered with blender? They look very good (especially pocket pc and bathroom).
maybe one more question: how long does it take to render the ball bearing and the pocket pc in such a quality? thanks
torvo,
blender is perse not meant for ID at all. with tricks you can work in a somehow semi precise workflow.
depening on what you need to model it could be an exellent tool.
today NURBS and subdiv are being merged. plug ins like T-spline for Rhino or Maya close that gab and enable you to convert subdiv into perfect nurbs patches.
however where ever you need cuts, precsise off sets, blender just cannot offer you any tool Rhino for example has.
When ever you need to do free from, more organic, and you do NOT work based on specs or dimensions, I do not see any issue with Blender.
I think it is also about time that the ID industry gets off this monoton ID esthetic. In jewelry for example, they mainly use NURBS and you see that.
I taught students on how to combine NURBS and subdiv together with success and they are very amazed by the extra possebilities Blender offers, which in contrast RHINO cannot offer at all.
Displacing a surface for example and baking it and others.
claas
Thanks for the positive comments, the tutorial is simply detailing the work flow I use to constrain the drawing geometry to an accuracy far greater than I could ever manufacture to. No doubt there are lots more experienced Blender users out there that have faster methods of modelling accurately. It would be good to incorporate other methods of creating accurate models, if others could pass on their techniques I would be happy to incorporate them and learn from them myself.
Torvo
I am pleased you have found the tutorial useful. I intend to add elements to it as I continue with the redesign of my CNC Router. I would like to add things like extracting the external geometry from one component to form the internal geometry of the next mating component; or building assemblies of components then modelling the support castings around them. The possibilities in Blender are almost unlimited.
The Pocket PC was modelled over a year ago and I used it recently to play with the Node Editor trying out the depth of field effect, personally I think it was better without depth of field. I can’t remember how long it took to render though.
The Bearing was scaled down from a 1280 x 1024 image I currently use as my wallpaper it took 20 minutes to render on my Athlon XP 2400 with 1 GB RAM. A modern machine would be much quicker.
Cekuhnen
I agree NURBS are a mathematically more accurate way to describe a 3D model and it would be great if Blenders NURBS were improved to have the functionality of top end CAD programs, we can only hope a developer will take up the challenge. The functionality of Blender however is already very capable for most aspects of product design you just have to work a little harder than you would with the wizard based CAD programs like Solidworks.
Being able to dimensionally constrain the length of an extrusion or angle of rotation and the improved Snap tools for modelling and cutting meshes adds to Blenders capabilities. With a scale of 1 Blender Unit = 1 millimetre you can model to sub micron level, far more accurate than the capabilities of the machining centres that would produce them.
The limitation for me at the moment is being able to output a descent line drawing for the machine shop. With the rate of improvement blender is undergoing I imagine this will be addressed in the not to distant future.
Rob
You can have all the tutorials in the world and still not get it. I suggest that you tackle the basics first, or at the same time with the tutorials you can find. Learn what subdivision modeling is all about as opposed to NURBS.
yes, i’m hoping for better nurbs and line tools (for example freehand lines and a comfortable snapping tool) like those one in the commercial apps - maybe we can see those in the near future if anyone with programming skills will develop a plug-in or perhaps they integrate them in blender 3.0 (hoping it will be a bit earlier)?
lol, nurbs for Blender, a very very old dream, so much covers under a thick layer of dust …
i would be happy if nurbs in blender would only be for modeling and not animation.
to animate you would need to convert it into mesh.
but good NURBS
would be great. with openNURBS for example you could also just load existing files made in rhino or similar cad applications.