export/import iges and Step
I’m a industrial designer and found Blender last year and I was using Alias for 20 years. Blender has best UI so far. I never see other cad software (include Alias) has such as great detail approaching in visul appealing even in wireframe mode… anyway, great tool for concept development and visualization. But my clients or vendors they all need to get my models for some cad work for their end. But I only can export obj, stl or fbx, which they can not do any modification. even very simple sheet metal design…so I have to redo everything in Rhino… I’m deeply hope blender can support import/export iges and step. and I think blender will not just game changer it should be Endgame , well, at least at Industrial design field…
13 Comments
I feel, you, m8
I've basically taught myself a highly Non-Destructive workflow, since a lot of tutorials just say "it;s impossible in blender" or "Blender's not CAD" , but to that I say: OBSERVE
I've used Blender as my only design workstation for my FTC robotics team, which includes tasks like advanced digital mechanical assembly and a lot of precision 3d-printing, and so far, it worked out pretty well. This year, we're getting a CNC and it's gonna be pretty interresting to see how I'll use that with blender.
Look, the point is ... industry standard is what it is, but for personal assembly projects and 3d-printing, you can actually get away with using blender, ant it only gets better from here. I'm actually going to go ahead and say blender is one of the best tools out there for 3d-printing, since you can combine the speed of polygonal modelling with the high precision of blender's axial shortcut key editing system.
also, great hope looms over the horizon. We know blender can already display NURBS, we just need a constraint solver. the math for that is publicly available, it's tricky to implement, but we COULD be "one guy takes his time and makes it" away from that, and after the initial experimental stage gets advanced enough, implementing an import/export in python would take a lot of time, reading documentations and all that, but THAT INFORMATION IS OUT THERE, STEP is an international standard and you can find the specifications. I guarantee you, STEP files in blender WILL be a thing ... but needless to say it would almost certainly take a while.
In the mean time, I'd actually prefer delving into this problem myself little by little, developing workflows with the tools we currently have, thinking of work-arounds for the things that aren't there yet, and ... yeah ... I've pretty much got 3D printing all covered, and, uhm, If I can get the CNC working too, it's goun B real goood .
* @meutzitzu * yes, I total agree with you, if 3d print is options, blender will be the hero. maybe blender and do precision modeling first (and I hear it's working on), then import STEP form other cad system.. I've no software background, just want blender hear there are a lot of ID guys need blender this kind of tool....other cad systems just too hard to use for quick concepts study..
* @chungmingying * while working for FTC, I've assembled the entire robot out of already-made STEP files that I got off of Tetrix's website. I used an online converter to convert them to obj (I used obj because I thought I'd get to keep the material colors, but it did not work, they were still pure white when I imported them :( ... maybe on a better exporter ? )
anyways, you Totally can IMPORT STEP files using an intermediary, and blender will work with them just fine .... the catch is that if you ever want to edit them ... you're kinda ducked. I mean you could use the remesh modifier, but on a large piece, it's gonna kill your computer before you start to get a reasonably non-minecraft-y look.
side note : this worked perfectly fine for me, because I didn't need to manufacture the STEP files, just assemble them (which I did by parenting all structurals to an empry)
BUT, that being said, I have gone ahead and RETOPOLOGISED all of them, by using solidify and bevel modifiers. why ? because my scene was steadily approaching 20 MILLION vertices, and that was a bit much even for my 16GB RAM. so then I'd keep the solidify and bevel modifiers off, until it was time to render.
I TOTALLY agree CAD is way too labour intensive for quick-sketches, which is exactly what you need in a robotics team ... itterative design ... you don't have time to carefully research wether or not a solution would work, if it kinda makes sense, JUST TEST IT, it's kinda using the same philosophy as the early days of the Soviet space program : fast, iterative design, with regular full tests.
thanks the feedback. hi Shadowwphile, If you use fusion 360 have you try export Obj from Blender to Fusion option T-spline, please check the link at 3:09 youtube.com/watch
I mean even I have use outher software to get iges or step files from other software like Rhino or Moi to get obj or stl to blender for rendering and animation purpose...
Hello everyone, I have learned blender in the last 3 months, I also need support from IGES and Step, a unique and simple program with excellent interfaces, thank you sincerely Arman3DG
* @Arman Kirakosyan * here you go blenderartists.org/t/from-blender-subdivision-to-n-u-r-b-s-iges-for-free/680688/11
On Alias 2020, it’s possible to exchange directly with Maya via subdivision bodies. Seems a simple way to do the same with Blender. What do you think? same with Blender. What do you think? knowledge.autodesk.com/support/alias-products/learn-explore/caas/CloudHelp/cloudhelp/2020/ENU/Alias-CrossProductWorkflows/files/GUID-B985083A-7F69-4C16-B1AE-5E313D04B4DB-htm.html
* @christophe.dubosc * Subdivision surfaces, at the limit are exactly the same as unweighted 4th order NURBS
you can convert a Sub-D into a NURBS easily, but you can only do so the other way around if the surface uses 4th order interpolation (to be fair, this is usually the case) AND it is not weighted.
you can only create G2 continuous shapes (a.k.a fillets won't work because they are circular and SUB-D can NEVER create circular surfaces (you can subdivide a cube as much as you want, you'll get a slightly pointy sphere, of equation x^4+y^4=1 at it's crossection ) for context, the equation of a circle is x^2+y^2=1)
I will pay sure, for a simple iges exporter from subdivided surfaces. Anyway if don't know for you there is a workaround to export nice surfaces from Blender Via FreeShip. blenderartists.org/t/from-blender-subdivision-to-n-u-r-b-s-iges-for-free/680688/28
i think before something like this happens Blender will need a lot more parametric modeling options. as it stands, I don't even know what you'd export from blender since IGES and STEP aren't raw geometry formats anyway. maybe curves? still probably not enough data to construct even the most basic parametric CAD file.
* @testure * yes, I tried both curves and surfaces in blender and export Obj to Rhino with no luck,, nothing in there. not sure why.
Hate to break this to you, but the only cross-format I have seen between artistic CAD and mechanical CAD is the STL format, which is just a mesh anyway, and invented way back as a simple format for 3D printers and the weak computers that had back then (in the 90s!). DXF is also mechanical but only 2D. You can export an STL from most mechanical CADs, but not the other way around. The only way Blender could ever do what you want would be to model in only splines and then some kind of exporter that I've never seen.
I just bought a CNC mill and have been designing parts with Solidworks, then using Autodesk's Fusion 360 to set up the milling paths. I've been modeling mechanical CAD in Blender a lot lately but unfortunately Fusion doesn't handle STLs very well. blegh.
* @shadowphile * In fairness to the ancient and archaic DXF, it's not just a 2D format. It also supports 3D; it's just super ugly and basic.