Like it says in the description, only Windows is currently supported. If you send me a PM with the email you used to purchase the addon I can give you a refund.
3: As far as I know, current mesher is the only one that supports GPL. Might have to dive into FreeCAD source to figure out what they’re doing differently.
@chrisd:
Only solid geometry is currently supported. Lines and points are ignored.
@ecrins:
I’m currently using the OCC library defaults for STEP files. Sub component colors is the thing I have put the most work in currently.
@rattle-snake:
Yes, I have the same idea and intention. Unfortunately the OCC library leaks memory each time the STEP is loaded so it complicates things.
@JohannesW:
I might have to create a separate operator for script support. Yes, bigger values are possible but in my testing they didn’t change much, but I can hopefully remove the maximum if there’s some sanity limit so setting it accidentally doesn’t crash the computer.
There seems to be a continuity error when moving from one surface to another. Here are two screenshots. The first one shows three pipes. Two of them (blue and green circle) have dents in them where the surfaces are separated by a sharp seam. The other screenshot shows the profile of the blue circled dent.
I can’t send you the file because of copyright issues.
But I did another test and when I set “Linear Deflection” to below 0.4, the seams are respected and there are no gaps. I just have to keep that in mind. Above 0.5 the seams start to break.
Cool, thanks for your work. Just bought and tested the add-on. At first sight it works perfectly and I’m thrilled that I can now import STP files.
But there are two things I still find in need of optimization:
1.
Stepper imports two collections: “filemname.flat” and “filemname.hierarchy”. Can this be changed in the import settings?
(Bug?)
With some files, only two empty collections are created and nothing is imported. What can be the reason for this?
I’m pretty new to Blender, but not CAD.
I usually do my visuals in Keyshot, but want to do much more.
Thank you so much for making this add-on to import Step files. I have found it to work brilliantly from Inventor and Fusion.
However, when I try to apply an image texture, it does not appear. I was wondering if anybody else had this issue? I also cannot unwrap it in UV editor.
Scott_Hunter, sounds like your UV mapping and image texture placement issue is not a Stepper problem, but basic Blender workflow. Not going that much into detail, but simple way to do it is to access edit mode of your 3D geometry -> select all faces -> press ‘u’ key to open UV menu -> choose preferred uv mapping method. If you have uv editor open, you can see the result right away. Then you should just add a new material to the geometry and place texture to material.
@ambi , how about the plugin? Are you making any update in near future for us to use?
I’m working with people who use various CAD programs.
Usually i’ll import the STEP into Freecad.
Then from there I convert to mesh the object, and export to a DEA file
Next i’l import into Blender, (and usually i have to fix a vew double placed object placements).
I am wondering how was the approximatly shaping solving is configurable ?.
For exam ple in freecad i can tell that a circle sould be meshed with an edge limit
(ea 60 degrees would create a triangle, but 1 degrees creates a round circle 360 vertexes).
As i work with with freeshaped stuff that often needs to be 3dprinted sometimes high acuracy is needed for me (ea set curves/circles angles to 0.1 degree or less).
@ambi I’m curious as your into the STEP formats,
Would it be verry hard to make a system that allows for export ? (not converting)
I assume that if Blender had a new object type in which each object is able to log as a textline.
So a line for cube / sphere / cylinder… the main meshes, and boolean operations (join extrude).
Could that be a starter to create STEP files with Blender ?
On screen the system would use regular meshes, the addition is to have STEP output.
Later bevel operations can be added as well, and other blender effects.
It would be really great if rebuilding still worked after re-opening a scene. If a cache is necessary (as per the error message), could that be saved to a file in the same folder as the STEP file? Or would that be just as slow as re-importing the whole file?
I’m hoping as well that there will be update for this addon. It’s very promising and with some usability tweaks and adjusted meshing options would be very useful.
Addon works great! does anyone have any good UV unwrap workflows? current work flow is from Solidworks --step–> MODO —fbx–> Blender. MODO convertor plugin imports materials, which the UV unwrapper in MODO has an option to use the materials as UV islands. I am new to blender so not sure if blender has something similar…
That would be great to know. Unwrapping complex data converted from CAD models is a pain in the a… Usually you end up with a lot of overlapping and self-intersecting UVs. Blender definitely isn’t the best unwrapper to deal with those. The more UV islands are to be expected, the longer Blender will take. Don’t even think about Lightmap Packing unless you want the PC to run throughout the night. UV Packmaster is a bit of a help packing the UVs in the end and checking them for errors. The workflow before that is the toughest part however.
So whoever has a great way to unwrap 100K+ polygon models converted from CAD models, let us know.
