Improving Snapping of Vertex, Edge and Face
I have been a parametric software user (SolidWorks) who is learning blender for fun. I would suggest one improvement in snapping edge to edge or vertex to vertex in edit mode environment. In parametric software, we use mates like coincident, Align, parallel, collinear etc. I think that is very good way of not arbitrarily snapping. If we preselect 2 edges and then say give coincident mates we are done!!!!!
21 Comments
I agree that various snapping/aligning improvements are needed.
I do a lot of hard surface modeling with Blender for full size fully operational 3D-printed droid models (BB8, BB9E, 2BB-2 etc). and it is very important to be able to be able to do things extremely accurately and quickly.
The things that can be done with Blender are far beyond what can be done with CAD, and just as accurately if not more so.
There are some addons that help now (TinyCad, Mesh Align Plus), but additional built-in tools for snapping would help a lot.
Improved Snapping Feature would be really nice. It would also be nice to snap rotate the vertex of an edge to an other edge
Example:
IMPROVE THE SNAP IN BLENDER! even for the cursor middle faces edges...on so many other things.
* @m.brockers * It's been taken care of. The great mano-wii will be added to the Blender developer team under a grant from the development fund specifically to work on snapping and precision modelling. Here's the announcment.
* @dpdpforlife * yea I saw his 30 minutes after having written this. good news
CAD and CG modeling and animation are completely different things, workflows and serve different purposes.
* @Orphydian * Sure but Blender is an all rounder tool so it should not be too much of a CAD software of course but it would be nice to have some CAD like features.
* @Orphydian * I clearly understand. But there shouldn't be rigidity in accpeting workflow from either side. CAD has also accepted mesh modeling too :) This really helps. In small models, snapping is quite annoying :)
* @Orphydian * the kind of answer you could read 5 years ago...
* @jehankothari27 * I don't understand his answer is stupid. if he knew about recent addons under 2.79 he wouldn't answer this. it could be setted in preferences of course...you want it good you don't want it good
* @Orphydian * A large number of Blender and 3dsMax users do architectural and engineering visualizations. Having worked in Visualization, CGI, and Game Dev, I will say there is a tremendous amount of overlap in the needs of people working in these genres. Just because a feature came from cad software doesn't mean that game art folks won't use it.
* @Orphydian * I'd also like to point out that the #3 most popular proposal on this site is "CAD-like snapping objects"
* @m.brockers * Im kinda new to Blender but I wouldnt be surprised if there are such addons (care to mentioned them pls !). I dont mind if we get CAD like snapping but just sayin
* @Orphydian * Snap Utilities is a great one. A lite version comes with blender called Snap Utilities Line, but it doesn't include the snapping for move and rotate. NP Station is a really good one too, but AFIK it hasn't been ported to 2.80 yet. This means the best free solution for 2.80 is Pivot Pro. It's a nice addon just because you have accurate control over placing the cursor.
* @dpdpforlife * no they will cut and merge vertices one by one hahaha
* @dpdpforlife * of course when beginning this is the most frustrating under blender and if you don't know shortcuts and use bender default oh my god. I'm like stuck if I want to do anything
* @dpdpforlife * what is the Lite version of Snap utilities doing ? I see it adds a add line tool to the toolbar .
* @Orphydian * yup. That’s what it does.
* @dpdpforlife * Yes. I looked at that. But there are many CAD systems. I wanted to have specific relations to be assigned which I mentioned. THat makes it much easier.
* @jehankothari27 * I agree it would be great. You could tie the length of one extruded part to the location of another item in the mesh. Another useful constraint would be normal/tangent. These would be useful for making a portion of the mesh stand off the surface (normal) or laying out pulley systems like chains or conveyors (tangent).
* @dpdpforlife * Yes there are others quite of few. Symmetricity too. Instead of arbitrarily placing 3d cursor! I mean if they are interested to explore this option then I can furnish all the data. I am originally from the parametric side so we deal with these relations daily. So when someone in tutorials says it is "almost touching"(while using G key), it makes me impatient lol. A body touching the surface plane is so important in rendering. Anyways, it is a matter of time if they consider thin then I can help them to make things very easy!