Native Import Support for CAD Formats (STEP, IGES, etc.)
I'd like to propose that Blender add native, built-in support for common CAD exchange formats, starting with STEP (.stp/.step) and IGES.
Bundle an open-source CAD kernel (Open CASCADE/OCCT — the de facto standard already used by most community add-ons) and add a native File > Import > CAD (STEP/IGES) option, with:
Adjustable tessellation quality (draft/standard/high) Preserved assembly hierarchy and basic materials/colors
This would remove a real barrier for engineers, product designers, and studios in industrial/architectural visualization who currently juggle fragile scripts or paid subscriptions just to get CAD geometry into Blender.
Best Regards, Sagi
1 Comment
I understand that this is something you want. However an application can ideally only have one kernel. Blender has its own kernel that has many other features that isn't supported by openCascade and vise versa (hairs, curves, grease pencil, volumes, GSPlat, alpositing, rendering, animation, sculptin, etc ). See occt3d.com/dev/doc/refman/html/index.html for an overview what openCascade as a kernel would impact. With OpenCascade you can create CAD applications, but not 3d content creation suites. They also come with its own data model.
When using OpenCascade as the kernel. Blender most likely need to remove many features that other users rely on. I believe the CAD community could join effort to provide an open source add-on infrastructure that solve the issues that the community has, also use the engineering skills that the CAD community has. I believe that is more feasible than asking an open source project to solve their issues of an commercial industry that has better access to resources and funding.
OpenCascade can also be integrated as a toolkit, however that adds overhead as data needs to be mapped to Blenders' internal data model when accessed. Probably at that time it fits better as an Add-on... In that case I expect an experienced Python developer would be enough to implement this.
Other commercial communities have had similar issues. They solved it by organizing them selves to be more open source friendly. For example VFX community (ASWF), rendering (OpenPBR, MaterialX, OpenUSD) Perhaps discuss with your peers to form a similar working group, focusing on the what makes the current scripts fragile and how to make them stable and reusable.
A project that is being executed at this moment is Collection IO this could be useful as well as it provides a different workflow of managing external data.