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  • Published 27 Dec 2018

Cad Tab for Top Menu Panel

With all the improvements going on at the moment the creation of accurate eg mechanical objects is still time consuming. How much easier and simpler it would be if we could have a new tab on the top menu panel for “CAD” type elements. Something along the lines of Solidworks sketch panel for example, which could then be saved as a sketch element and used in the usual way in blender (extrude, scale etc). Iv’e no idea if this is possible but seems there is a opportunity to fill a gap here. Regards

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Development Status: Open

Upvote 11 Downvote 1
howards.end
27 Dec 2018

6 Comments

duarte.framos

We don't need a "CAD tab", you can create a tab yourself, what we need is CAD tools and better snapping

2
dpdpforlife

Yes Please.

1
Ryxx

I made a CAD tools proposal some times ago, see here: Link

dpdpforlife

Unless I'm misinterpreting @howards.end, I think I can help clear things up. Feel free to correct me, or use this image or text in your proposal.

Drawing Panel This is what the drawing panel in Inventor looks like. I know you can make any of the shapes of the create panel using tools in blender, but it's really more how they interact and retain separate dimensions inside of the sketch that's really useful. So if I made a simple sketch (curve object) using a line and a circle in blender, the dimensions reported in the Properties Panel would be of the overall sketch. In an Inventor, Solidworks, or Autocad sketch, I can set the dimensions of each component separately. I could, for instance change the diameter of only the circle without using a calculator or having to separate the circle to a new object, resize and then reattach. You also have interactive drawing of shapes in these programs instead of the object just being inserted at the cursor. This saves steps. I could for instance start drawing a circle of an exact dimension at the end point of a line if I have point snapping turned on and use numeric input for the diameter in one step. In blender, I would first have to snap the cursor to the end point, then use the F6 Redo panel to set the size, then combine it with the line into a single curve.

Add in the trim, extend and split and you have the equivalent of 2d booleans happening on the curve level. Something that blender can't do currently. Also notice that there are the equivalent to blender's array and mirror modifiers happening on the curve level without using separate modifiers.

howards.end Author

@dpdpforlife: This is exactly what I'm talking about, from what I understand these programmes use parametric modelling but I think that would be more about the actual use after the sketches are constructed. Pretty much everything you show in the example would cover it. I think this is the one weakness in Blender at this time, one which if came to fruition would give Blender a much bigger following.

Lauloque

Mockup please. Consider as if you were talking to a bunch of newbies not knowing anything.