Has it gotten better with editing? I tried a couple of years ago and just couldn’t. It’s amazing for the 3d software. If they could make it easier to measure things, I’d use it for CAD too.
Maybe I’m doing too much engineering - I found Open SCAD to be way easier than Blender for making stuff, and that’s saying something because Open SCAD is quite a pain.
I can see why for engineering, it allows you to be super precise. I’m not sure the people who developed the CAD side of Blender have ever used it for anything precise or to build details and drawings of any kind. They just seem clueless, there is no other way to put it. AutoSketch used to be so great, maybe the paid version is now. That was different than AutoCAD and Revit, but I loved it.
Me too. As I said before, it’s just on my wish list. I’ve learned Blender pretty darn well. If it could do CAD in a decent way, it would be perfect. There are too many UI’s in my head as it is.
I hate the syntax in OpenSCAD. It LOOKS like something object-oriented but it is procedural, causing oh so many footguns, if one expects it to act like OOP.
I’m a mostly procedural thinker, even though I program in OOP all day long. OpenSCAD works a lot like the rest of my code: write it, try it, look at the results, curse, revise it, try it, look at the results, curse differently… you get there eventually. I do highly suggest not coding a masterpiece in OpenSCAD without visualizing the components first.
I believe i recall there being an update specifically to the video editor within the past year or two, but don’t quote me on that. They have done updates to post processing, the timeline functionality, grease pencil, and i believe some other things that would apply to video editing, so i imagine it would be easier to work with. There are cad and measuring add-ons as well, i believe some free within blender itself.
I bought Davinci, so I’m happy with that, but I’ll still check out the Blender version. I can’t really complain about it, it does so much and is free.
As far as CAD goes, they aren’t really usable to be fast in CAD. It’s super cumbersome. You should be able to move things 1" to the right or left, put things at certain heights and move around the space in an easy way. I haven’t found anything that can do that for imperial. Also, the tools for making dimensions is really bad and I don’t think there’s a way to make a blueprint unless you come up with something yourself. That being said, it’s free and it’s not their focus. They concentrate on the 3D portions.
I’ve started using FreeCAD for CAD work, I’ve used Fusion 360 for 5 years before trying FreeCAD (again, I tried it a few years ago) and it works pretty good.
It’s different and it’s taking some getting used to but it’s working out quite nicely so far.
If the units are set to inches for length. You can just type G (grab), X (or Y or Z), and 1 to move an inch in any direction. I think it used to be worse.
Unless they’ve changed it in the last 2 releases, it’s still that you have to decimal out the inches. So 1" would be .0833333. I don’t have time for that shit. It’s so easy in any other cad program from decades ago. Like I said, it’s obviously not their focus and that’s fine. It’s just on my wish list.
The imperial units still default to feet, but you can append a " to type in inches! You can also get fractions with one in the numerator by typing /x, and if you go into preferences -> input -> keyboard and check “Default to Advanced Numeric Input” you can type in e.g. 3/8" as well as do things like addition, subtraction, and multiplication in your numeric inputs. ^-^
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I have no idea what you’re trying to communicate. You seem to know Blender really well and can modify it easily. That is my worst nightmare. I wish there was a way for them to just have an architectural drawing units button, it would be so freaking easy to use. Making drawings would still be a pain, because you can’t print to scale, but building things the right way in 3D would be a start.
Ah, I definitely could’ve formatted that better, sorry about that. ^-^ For what it’s worth, I’m no expert with blender, I was just rambling a bit. I’ll try again, but the tldr is that while it’s probably not very good for engineering yet, it has been getting better at it bit by bit. Once you change two settings it’s easy now to do what you were talking about and move objects by an inch without needing to calculate and type out decimal values.
The first setting is to switch the Units System between unitless (I think this used to be the only option), metric, and imperial. The dropdown for that is in the Scene tab of the right sidebar (the icon is a cone behind a sphere with a dot above it, it’s probably right above a red globe icon), under a folder called Units.
To get to the second setting you need to go to the Edit dropdown at the top of the screen, select Preferences..., pick the Input section from the left sidebar of the window that pops up, and under the Keyboard folder activate the checkbox labelled Defaultto Advanced NumericInput. My earlier message wasn’t quite accurate, it turns out this setting is more important than I’d thought.
With both of those settings changed, you can select something in your model and press g to grab it, then x, y, or z to move along a particular axis, if you then type 1 blender will move the object one foot along that axis. If instead you type 1" it will handle the conversion and move one inch.
As a bonus, the advanced numeric input also lets you use fractions and do simple math, so if you want to move something by 3/8" along the x axis you can type gx3/8"<enter> or if you want to move something by 1/16" less than 3/4" without bothering with the math, you can type in gx3/4"-1/16"<enter>, though unfortunately it’s important to put the quotation mark after both fractions or the one without will be interpreted as that fraction of a foot.
^-^’ Hopefully that’s a little clearer, like I said at the top it’s probably still not the best tool for what it sounds like you want to do with it, but the thing you said was on your wishlist has been added and in my experience it did make blender significantly more useful for designing simple real world objects.
The people editing their images in Blender are the same people who edit their videos in Blender lol.
You say that like it’s a bad thing lol
Has it gotten better with editing? I tried a couple of years ago and just couldn’t. It’s amazing for the 3d software. If they could make it easier to measure things, I’d use it for CAD too.
FreeCAD for CAD as others mentioned.
Maybe I’m doing too much engineering - I found Open SCAD to be way easier than Blender for making stuff, and that’s saying something because Open SCAD is quite a pain.
I can see why for engineering, it allows you to be super precise. I’m not sure the people who developed the CAD side of Blender have ever used it for anything precise or to build details and drawings of any kind. They just seem clueless, there is no other way to put it. AutoSketch used to be so great, maybe the paid version is now. That was different than AutoCAD and Revit, but I loved it.
I’ve always seen Blender as a 3D art tool but never as a precise 3D engineering tool. Didn’t even know Blender had CAD features
Me too. As I said before, it’s just on my wish list. I’ve learned Blender pretty darn well. If it could do CAD in a decent way, it would be perfect. There are too many UI’s in my head as it is.
I hate the syntax in OpenSCAD. It LOOKS like something object-oriented but it is procedural, causing oh so many footguns, if one expects it to act like OOP.
I’m a mostly procedural thinker, even though I program in OOP all day long. OpenSCAD works a lot like the rest of my code: write it, try it, look at the results, curse, revise it, try it, look at the results, curse differently… you get there eventually. I do highly suggest not coding a masterpiece in OpenSCAD without visualizing the components first.
I believe i recall there being an update specifically to the video editor within the past year or two, but don’t quote me on that. They have done updates to post processing, the timeline functionality, grease pencil, and i believe some other things that would apply to video editing, so i imagine it would be easier to work with. There are cad and measuring add-ons as well, i believe some free within blender itself.
I bought Davinci, so I’m happy with that, but I’ll still check out the Blender version. I can’t really complain about it, it does so much and is free.
As far as CAD goes, they aren’t really usable to be fast in CAD. It’s super cumbersome. You should be able to move things 1" to the right or left, put things at certain heights and move around the space in an easy way. I haven’t found anything that can do that for imperial. Also, the tools for making dimensions is really bad and I don’t think there’s a way to make a blueprint unless you come up with something yourself. That being said, it’s free and it’s not their focus. They concentrate on the 3D portions.
I’ve started using FreeCAD for CAD work, I’ve used Fusion 360 for 5 years before trying FreeCAD (again, I tried it a few years ago) and it works pretty good.
It’s different and it’s taking some getting used to but it’s working out quite nicely so far.
I’ll give that a try again. I tried that about 3 or 4 years ago and couldn’t make that switch, but I can’t remember why, lol.
The 1.0 release helps a lot. They got a bit of a kick in the pants while Ondsel existed.
Oh definitely do. The recent improvements (in the last 1-2 years) have made it much more useable, and sometimes even intuitive.
If the units are set to inches for length. You can just type G (grab), X (or Y or Z), and 1 to move an inch in any direction. I think it used to be worse.
Unless they’ve changed it in the last 2 releases, it’s still that you have to decimal out the inches. So 1" would be .0833333. I don’t have time for that shit. It’s so easy in any other cad program from decades ago. Like I said, it’s obviously not their focus and that’s fine. It’s just on my wish list.
The imperial units still default to feet, but you can append a " to type in inches! You can also get fractions with one in the numerator by typing /x, and if you go into preferences -> input -> keyboard and check “Default to Advanced Numeric Input” you can type in e.g. 3/8" as well as do things like addition, subtraction, and multiplication in your numeric inputs. ^-^
Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I have no idea what you’re trying to communicate. You seem to know Blender really well and can modify it easily. That is my worst nightmare. I wish there was a way for them to just have an architectural drawing units button, it would be so freaking easy to use. Making drawings would still be a pain, because you can’t print to scale, but building things the right way in 3D would be a start.
Ah, I definitely could’ve formatted that better, sorry about that. ^-^ For what it’s worth, I’m no expert with blender, I was just rambling a bit. I’ll try again, but the tldr is that while it’s probably not very good for engineering yet, it has been getting better at it bit by bit. Once you change two settings it’s easy now to do what you were talking about and move objects by an inch without needing to calculate and type out decimal values.
The first setting is to switch the
Units Systembetween unitless (I think this used to be the only option), metric, and imperial. The dropdown for that is in theScenetab of the right sidebar (the icon is a cone behind a sphere with a dot above it, it’s probably right above a red globe icon), under a folder calledUnits.To get to the second setting you need to go to the
Editdropdown at the top of the screen, selectPreferences..., pick theInputsection from the left sidebar of the window that pops up, and under theKeyboardfolder activate the checkbox labelledDefault to Advanced Numeric Input. My earlier message wasn’t quite accurate, it turns out this setting is more important than I’d thought.With both of those settings changed, you can select something in your model and press
gto grab it, then x, y, or z to move along a particular axis, if you then type1blender will move the object one foot along that axis. If instead you type1"it will handle the conversion and move one inch.As a bonus, the advanced numeric input also lets you use fractions and do simple math, so if you want to move something by 3/8" along the x axis you can type
gx3/8"<enter>or if you want to move something by 1/16" less than 3/4" without bothering with the math, you can type ingx3/4"-1/16"<enter>, though unfortunately it’s important to put the quotation mark after both fractions or the one without will be interpreted as that fraction of a foot.^-^’ Hopefully that’s a little clearer, like I said at the top it’s probably still not the best tool for what it sounds like you want to do with it, but the thing you said was on your wishlist has been added and in my experience it did make blender significantly more useful for designing simple real world objects.
It doesn’t do it natively, but it does have plugins for CAD features