Good afternoon, I am a college student who has known Blender for a few years now, and would like to contribute in GSoC 2016 by adding CAD functionality. I would like to ear your thoughts on my project idea.
I have been checking on what has been done to implement CAD in Blender. I didn't find almost any software. Mostly there were forum discussions about how great it would be if Blender could have CAD features, while others stated that it would be impractical. The only actual add-on I found was this one http://www.cad4arch.com/cadtools/index.htm but although it is still being developed, it is paid and only works with Blender 2.49b. The author states an intention of embedding it into Blender, though. >From what I read, and based on my experience working with CAD packages, I compiled a list of targets for what I would propose myself to achieve during GSoC: ordered from most important to less important - Add a new editor that would allow the user to make ISO-compliant drawings of individual parts. - This requires, from the top of my head, the ability of drawing the 6 isometric views, at a standard scale, on standard sized paper (A4, A3, etc.), adding dimensions (lengths and angles), centerlines, axes, being able to do section views (with crosshatch drawing) and detail views. - Add sketch tools (the ability to draw lines, circles, rectangles, etc. ; this serves the purpose of increasing the precision of drawing with Blender) - Add reference geometry (reference planes and axes) - Add a dimensioning tool (something that allows the user to edit the dimensions a posteriori the sketch being created) - Modify the array modifier in order to allow explicit circular arrays - This can already be achieved using a trick with empties, but I would like to clarify this workflow and simplify it (for example, instead of the user rotating the empty by 360/n degrees, where n is the number of objects, he would simply select n and the modifier would take care of the rest) - Add a fillet tool (a very simple addition; can be done with vertex groups and the bevel modifier currently; once again I simply want to simplify it) - Add a precise offset tool (currently, I can simply extrude and scale ; I want to make this work with the dimensioning tool mentioned above) I believe these are all feasible by me, with the first one being the most complex and one of the few requiring C programming. The others could be implemented as a Python Add-On. Best regards, Joao _______________________________________________ Bf-committers mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blender.org/mailman/listinfo/bf-committers
