CAD Studies In Blender

[Model EnginerdParticipant @modelenginerd]

Hello all, new here and getting into running live steam in my yard.

…and yup, I'm one of those guys that spent hours backing up all my F360 files.

I wanted to know if any of you were using Blender in a CADish way, and if you had fresh ideas.

Contrary to the word going around, Blender can be used parametrically and nondestructively in a very accurate way. It just requires some modified workflows.

Below are some parametric studies I did using Blender + cheap addons (not required but nice). Dimensioning displays live and is like PMI in NX.

Below is a Cayuse cyclic where the boss printed dead-on 1.002" for a nice snug fit on the pipe.

Anyways, I'm having fun with it. The learning curve is very steep, but it's worth taking a look given Blender will likely be free for a long time with an almost insane fan base. For now, I'm only looking at using it as a pseudo CAD for steam powered designs and making casting patterns.

Regards

[Model EnginerdParticipant @modelenginerd]

[Mark Simpson 1Participant @marksimpson1]

We use Blender to combine and massage CAD models for VR and AR purposes. It's a huge toolbox of stuff, tremendous for massaging and munging things… mostly i think it gets used to prepare 3d scenes for games,smart renderings and animations….

It's very powerful and, in my opinion, a total BEAST!!!! I usually have Blender on one screen and another open to look for youtube tutorials. It won't go away for sure, it's open source(ish), and you can write extensions in python…

In my opinion it's at least as tough to master as the high end cad systems, but it's free!!!

[Model EnginerdParticipant @modelenginerd]

Agreed. As a full-time drafter running the fancy stuff during the day, Blender is not necessarily CAD friendly, but it can be forced to do the job. I've been using it for almost 20 years, and I still feel behind on the features.

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