This is potentially one of the very best Blender news ever! As a designer, a real CAD system in Blender would be a dream come true. Thank you very much!
I second that. As a user of Inventor for nearly 20 years and having use Pro-E, Catia and Solidworks in different jobs, I installed Blender a year ago to give it a try and my reaction was, "very nice piece of software but nah", I've watched a couple of people doing stuff of youtube and my god, talk about zero precision for engineering stuff but if they come up with something just a bit close I will definitely reconsider.
while the wish is great reality is it will not happen. for that blender needs nurbs modeling tools. but I can see this being very useful for interior design / archViz
Blender is actually one of the most collaborative, artistic, community driven, ethical and interesting piece of software I’ve come across. It’s almost spiritually fulfilling
That is pretty sad dude. Don't get emotionally attached to software - use the right tool for the job. Blender is getting horribly bloated with all this stuff - it is great for many uses but it is not master of any. CAD - this still can't use nurbs which is what every cad program uses for a specific reason.
@@corail53 Blender is not a "software", is a community and it's developed by it. After effects or Maya is, you buy the program and that's basically the end of it, you have little to none control over it's development as a user.
We really need an alternative to Fusion 360 for the average hobbyist. Still early days, but I hope CAD Sketcher can eventually fill that gap. Using the blender interface is a genius move and I hope development on this project continues!
If you're looking for history-based parametric CAD, you might want to give FreeCAD a look. The UI is a bit clunky, but if you know your way around something like Solidworks or Siemens NX, it should be easy enough to pick up.
I'd recommend looking into Plasticity, it's in its really early stages right now, but it has great potential. It won't be free, but it will be perpetual and fairly affordable. MoI3D is also good, but it is a bit expensive and entirely destructive as opposed to non-destructive.
this is incredible honestly. I baught and installed after 10 seconds in. As a long time CAD user getting used to blender-style modelling has always been a challenge. Sketching is one of those things that really makes a difference, especially when it's parametric. Looking forward to see how this will develop in the future.
One really interesting thing that could be is having various ways to create work planes. Which i'm sure you've already thought about, but is an incredibly powerful tool when you can create planes through edges, vertices, angle, offsets and so on. Anyway, already this is amazing.
@@redherring5532 yes shapr3d is great actually i need to try using it a bit more. I normally do 3d modelling for productiong on more heavy duty CAD programs like fusion, solidworks, rhino, and use blender for rendering/animations/modelling of non-production items or concepting. But precision modelling in blender is still something i struggle with. Adding workplanes is just something that really enables sketch-based modelling be powerful. With introducing an addon like that in blender, it just seems like a natural future step to look into, which i'm sure the developers are thinking about.
To everyone: Have fun! and have a little patience with CAD Sketcker its 100% going to have some growing pains but the more people share the news, report bugs and devs join the better it's going to get 🤗 10/May/22 - Coincident point joining is now a reality plus MANY other things. Join the discord to stay in the loop! Maybe take a look at this video too: th-cam.com/video/V452ModEqqo/w-d-xo.html
As a solidworks professional, I find this add on for blender incredibly powerful and exciting! Having a constrained cad tool that creates meshes directly is very cool. While both Solidworks and Fusion 360 are capable of surface based cad, and Fusion can even work with meshes directly, that is not the main purpose of those tools so the workflow can be really awkward. Blender though is purpose built for meshes. Sketches and constraints really takes Blender to the next level.
THIS IS INSANE! I've been waiting for this for about 4 long years. I've bought lots of blender add-ons and hard surface tutorials, but it's hard to get my head around. I have 20 years of CAD modeling experience and the parametric way is the fastest and most editable with included precision. If this is done right, the implications will be huge. I'm joining everything and will get involved in development even with my limited skills!
@@leonlionheart5927 freecad is very confusing, i have no idea how that works... have you tried it and compared it to an industry standard or are you just piping an opinion about software you've not used? so i assume people want it in Blender cos they know how to use Blender right
@@leonlionheart5927 Mainly convenience and direct interoperability with Blender's absolutely gigantic feature set. I just want CAD features for their convenience and ease of use as a hobbyist solely focused on digital results.
@@DarkShroom Solid Edge is also a nice alternative. I like them because it is focusing on construction blender is huge and have tons of functions that I don't really need (yet). No, I havn't compared it to industry standard like e.g. CATIA or similar stuff. I just don't have the money for that. However Blender develops fast and become more and more interesting maybe I will give a deeper look at it. Thx for your comment.
Amazing work guys, congratulations! Another development that helps CAD people to adopt Blender for modelling is that Revit '23 can now insert and cleanup (automatically remove tesselation lines, maybe something to do with coplaner faces?) obj files (both in projects and Families). A lot of CAD people can't make the transition into Blender because it can't natively make technical drawings. This is a massive shame for such a fantastic modelling program.
They also act like you will never be able to make such drawings, even though addons like these will enable that to happen VERY soon. They don't know how many things can just be added or modified in Blender with addons.
Excellent. Long overdue. Never understood why the open source community required two seperate 3D modelling tools. Especially when splitting time and development resources instead of combining it. That is of course, on the proviso CAD sketcher will remain open source & free. Lots of packages start out that way to get market share, then suddenly go private, once its effectively cornered the market with a must have tool.
Blender is polygon based. The model resolution depends on the number of polygons it has. A true CAD program (ex. FreeCad) is Nurbs based which is mathematically precise. You don't loose precision no matter how deep you zoom in. These two format are not exactly interchangeable. This is analogous to Raster vs Vector in 2D graphics systems.
@@alihms Isnt that the equivalent of demanding modellers write in machine code rather than C++ though ? IMHO, that is kind of missing the point. Granted, freehand solid vertex modelling is often desired. But sometimes a higher level shape modelling is often desired, with an abstraction layer between. One forces the user to physically model the number of polygons used. One method does not and can leave the software to automate the polygon count by scale. Basically, just because you want a vertex mesh as a final product, doesnt mean you have to work at the vertex mesh low level. Nor do you meed to store the structure as a vertex mesh model.
As someone who started out modeling in Cinema 4D and now uses Solidworks for work, I MUCH prefer Solidworks for any hard surface modeling projects. I love the parametric aspect of Solidworks and the geometry it creates is damn near perfect when exporting to Unreal Engine.
This is amazing! I did CAD for 5 years and one of the huge hurdles in going from something like Inventor or Solidworks to Blender was a lack of constraint design. Huge potential here, very excited!
oooh! As someone who's been banging my head into the brick wall learning curve of FreeCAD without any progress, I am very intrigued to see an approach in Blender that may work more intuitively... or at all.
I know the struggle. I have just tried modelling something simple in FreeCAD another time just the other day and it failed without explanation, this time right in the sketch solver, which is not a component i had issues with before. But i've had so many mystery failures before. I repeated the same steps, it failed again. Then i repeated the same steps in FreeCad LinkStage3 (aka Realthunder's fork) and it WORKED. I have had situations where i had reproducible issues like that several times before, and once i decided to report a bug, but it was impossible, i was supposed to create a forum thread first before filing on the developer issue tracker. I did, i uploaded my files, made a full description of steps, and as a result, a helpful francophone forum member (so there was a language barrier) tried ever more convoluted and difficult to understand ways to rescue my project; but i could not get a simple answer out of the forum whether what i'm seeing is a bug that i'm allowed to report on the issue tracker, or whether it's supposed to behave like that for some hard reason. I asked explicitly. It was seriously heartbreaking, like, if it's a bug, OK, it'll get fixed eventually, if there's a reason, OK, i can work with that, but like, uh, what, nothing, i'm at loss for words. I have had this sort of a mixed success with FreeCAD main upstream branch in the past, but i haven't run into a problem with LinkStage3 yet. Like sure it's as convoluted, concept-heavy and opaque as the upstream, it inherits all of the inherent issues, but at least everything i throw at it just works. I have also done complex designs in Fusion and while that's a lock slicker and smoother, i actually can't say for certain which of them i like more, since FreeCAD has a lot of inherent power and functionality, like a LOT. So yeah you can learn FreeCAD, you can follow tutorials, it's all entirely possible, and it's got some massive benefits, but please use Realthunder's fork, you can do all the same steps, the same tutorials apply. From what i hear, in a couple years, it's planned to integrate that fork back fully into upstream FreeCAD, but they're quite slow. Whether Blender will ever be as smooth to use as a real CAD, i don't know... but it's an exciting development.
After spending months giving FreeCAD my best shot using it both personally and for work, I finally got just too damned frustrated by it and switched to Fusion360. It's too unstable, too clunky, and stunningly obtuse.
@@SianaGearz I second to that , LS3 is the way to go. I can se some benefots in cad in blender but what about tech drawings, what abbout assemblies? I once trued to learn blender and it gave it up beacause it was clunky and unwieldy as hell and stayed with 3dstudiomax
@@foootz haha I went the opposite way and switched from the clunky 3DS Max R3 to a much more direct and artistically helpful Blender 2.0a more than 20 years ago! Blender is very unusual but once you're in its workflow, it works with you. Back in the day it was all about printing out the keyboard cheat sheet and learning it. Now it's got more flexibility and discoverability but retains the same workflow.
YES! Finally a complete open source CAD solution. Blender has been poised for this for so long and I've been praying that someone would adapt it for this. If FEA applications are also made available based on this, that would be a dream come true.
YES! I've been studying AutoCAD and will be graduating in Computer Drafting Technologies December 10th! This is amazing news and cannot waiting to start playing with this program over the summer to start making stuff in blender!
This is absolutely amazing! I've been looking for since leaving CAD for blender! I enjoy modeling the way blender is typically used but sometimes I want exactly what I can measure with my calipers. I'm amazed at how it works as I'd expect it would and I really can't wait to go back to constraints, entering values, and using sketches and work planes like typical in Inventor/ Fusion 360. Fantastic job everyone and best of luck on future progress! I'm looking forward to it!
Thank you for this add-on! Another step ahead for blender being an AIO software! Its truly amazing how a large community can achieve such a large feat with creating and upgrading an amazing program like blender! FOS software is amazing! Even though some add ons arent free, its still worth to pay for blender add ons than buying expensive subscription based software!
Nice! I think it is time for more CAD-like addons in blender. There are tons of animation addons, texturing, character modeling, etc. but there is a shortage in engineering design in blender. It is a big opportunity for programmers and software developers. Thanks
This looks amazingly promising. I design a lot of my cabinetry and furniture for my clients in Blender before production and having real CAD abilities directly in Blender would be a huge time saver and improve the workflow by not having to jump between Blender and a CAD program. Looking forward to the further development.
I really liked this initiative, I'm Brazilian and I'm going to share with a facebook group about blender here in Brazil. but I wanted to congratulate you on the great adon
Have fun! and have a little patience its 100% going ot have some growing pains but the more people report bugs and dev join in the better it's going to get 🤗
This brings me back to my first candle holder 20years ago on solidworks. So glad this came out I have to redesign the interior of the new apartment we're buying and I'm going to have so much fun.
This is looking great! Hope they add printing sheets/layouts, which is standard for CAD programs. This keeps getting overlooked in all the blender CAD plugin's I've seen so far; until it's addressed, blender will be of limited use in arch/eng cad work.
Holy Moly! Where do you go with Geometry Nodes today? That's amazing you can build something like that in Blender. As for bugginess, it can't be worse than FreeCAD. ;-)
Thank you so much for introducing this. This is a wonderful opportunity for people who want to work in blender, having experience in CAD and not in blender. This is going to be ground breaking.
As a CAD engineer, it is so awesome to see blender getting cad sketcher considering I have been considering to learn blender to consider it's animating and rendering quality for my cad renderings etc. (Lot of consider lol)
This add-on looks amazing. I'm super impressed and psyched to use this new tool. The potential of this boggles. After installation and then following this tutorial, I started by clicking "add sketch" and the 3-plane thing that appeared was about 50 times larger than my entire model and screen view. I have a default scene set up to millimeters and the default cube is 10mm on a square plane that is 100mm. I wonder if there's a way to set up the default size of the 3D sketch plane thing. Upon drawing the sketch, the dimensions were placed with super long leaders, the arrows would not drag, and the number values are huge, like 100mm tall. The construction line appeared as solid despite the property box being selected. I'm betting that the issues I'm having are some sort of scene scaling thing. I have unit system = metric, units scale = 1, and length set to mm. That's right isn't it?
@@plane9182 Thank you, that solved everything. Now the sketch planes and dims appear with sensible sizes and are easier to select. I had to edit the values in all the object modifiers, rescale the X/Y/Z positions of all objects, etc You know, all the usual stuff. I wonder if there's an add-on that can rescale entire scenes! I guess the lesson is to set the unit scale correctly from the start. Also, Jonathan already posted a video on scaling a scene for precision modeling so it's not like I wasn't told previously.
It doesn't seem to have any integration with cad transforms because the sketcher entities aren't regular mesh objects that standard add-ons can affect in any way
Back in school i was good in cad, and now im leaning blender. Seeing this both favorites programs togheter makes me want to give it a try. Its just awesome.
Wooooowwww, truly fantastic!! I haven't had a chance to explore it yet, but what I've seen has already blown my mind. Once again, Blender has grown because of the dedication and vision of its community, so congratulations!
I love you...really, this is what I was looking for from a while. The first step to replace all the Autodesk power, by using blender for litterally everything. Cad, BIM...omg the dream start to be true...one step after the other thanks!
So I've been using this a little bit today, and for anyone who was still doubting it, this is the real deal! I'm personally just as excited as everyone else seems to be for this, I just love how hlorus got the approach "right" IMHO, by combining the best aspects of existing Blender mesh tools (modifiers) with a fully parametric constraint-based approach for sketching! I'll keep using this from now on, and I'll be more than happy to contribute if I find some bugs or missing features (I happen to be more of a dev than a CAD user)!
Seriously thanks for this! So much less awkward that Fusion 360. This is going to help me immensely with some projects I've had on the back burner for a while!
as a person who both uses blender and solidworks. i can say this is going to take on industry pretty easily since both blender and the addon is free and working very gooooood
Downloaded and contributed what I could, (this project is so awesome it deserves way more than my meagre, donation, trust me, so please support these guys as much as you can!) couldn't be happier, CAD sketcher is a very exciting development
I am wildly excited to see this and use it. I got into Blender solely for the purpose of 3D modelling with the intent of printing precision parts for our business. Being able to use this constraint-driven type of modelling without the extreme awkwardness of CAD Transforms will be such a blessing. Can't wait for the future videos!
Really happy to have discovered that addon. I cat say anything else that I am 1000% supportive of this amazing project and can't wait to help. Thank you for your work
Hot dang! And this is still in development, yet it is THAT awesome? Dayum! I've played a bit with FreeCAD and seeing sketching come to Blender (and with datum planes and integrating so well, no less) is just amazing. Kudos to the authors.
Wow! This is a breakthrough in parametric modelling with Blender. I am looking forward to seeing closely the development of this Add-On. As a mechanical designer I see a lot of potential in it, specially during concept design to make quick geometric modifications without the need of exporting a model from a CAD software and importing it to Blender for materials preview. Keep up the good work. This is really inspiring. Congratulations!
Oh dear! Please don't stop developing and supporting it. It would be so great to have such functionality in standard blender one day. It is a dream come true to have single software eg to desing and render the 3d printing.
As someone who has been meaning to get around to learning both some basic modelling and basic CAD for some time now, this is such a wonderful marriage! (and someone whose gradually going more and more militant about FOSS) I'll definitely give this a go next time I need to edit a 3d print, subscribed.
holy lord damnit you did it and you hella nailed it ! thx for sharing such a tool on blender its been years i think loads of us are tweaking around addons to get a proper "CAD" workflow !
I was looking for something like this a month ago and ended up getting a couple paid plugins that didn't quite do what I needed and were buggy or unsupported in latest blender. So glad something like this is free and open source! super excited
This is potentially one of the very best Blender news ever! As a designer, a real CAD system in Blender would be a dream come true. Thank you very much!
I second that. As a user of Inventor for nearly 20 years and having use Pro-E, Catia and Solidworks in different jobs, I installed Blender a year ago to give it a try and my reaction was, "very nice piece of software but nah", I've watched a couple of people doing stuff of youtube and my god, talk about zero precision for engineering stuff but if they come up with something just a bit close I will definitely reconsider.
I third this as a 3d printing enthusiast 🥰
Im in the same biat as you my friend!
while the wish is great reality is it will not happen. for that blender needs nurbs modeling tools. but I can see this being very useful for interior design / archViz
@@ericholliday7071 for 3d printing you don't really need cad... the 3d printers themselves accept meshes like STL models
Blender is actually one of the most collaborative, artistic, community driven, ethical and interesting piece of software I’ve come across. It’s almost spiritually fulfilling
ethical 🥴
That is pretty sad dude. Don't get emotionally attached to software - use the right tool for the job. Blender is getting horribly bloated with all this stuff - it is great for many uses but it is not master of any. CAD - this still can't use nurbs which is what every cad program uses for a specific reason.
@@corail53 Blender is not a "software", is a community and it's developed by it. After effects or Maya is, you buy the program and that's basically the end of it, you have little to none control over it's development as a user.
Open Source is very much a labour of love. It’s proprietary companies you have to be careful about.
@@corail53 CAD is for drawing railroad tracks for 40 years in your mind numbing career. Blender is for art 🖼 and happiness.
We really need an alternative to Fusion 360 for the average hobbyist. Still early days, but I hope CAD Sketcher can eventually fill that gap. Using the blender interface is a genius move and I hope development on this project continues!
If you're looking for history-based parametric CAD, you might want to give FreeCAD a look. The UI is a bit clunky, but if you know your way around something like Solidworks or Siemens NX, it should be easy enough to pick up.
FreeCAD is good aside from the topological naming problem, but assembly workbenches like assembly4 don't suffer from that
I'd recommend looking into Plasticity, it's in its really early stages right now, but it has great potential. It won't be free, but it will be perpetual and fairly affordable. MoI3D is also good, but it is a bit expensive and entirely destructive as opposed to non-destructive.
Agreed.
Fusion 360 is really nice though
Wow, very promising CAD features for Blender!
Looking forward to it!
this is incredible honestly. I baught and installed after 10 seconds in. As a long time CAD user getting used to blender-style modelling has always been a challenge. Sketching is one of those things that really makes a difference, especially when it's parametric. Looking forward to see how this will develop in the future.
One really interesting thing that could be is having various ways to create work planes. Which i'm sure you've already thought about, but is an incredibly powerful tool when you can create planes through edges, vertices, angle, offsets and so on. Anyway, already this is amazing.
@@guynao it's one of the main reasons I went with Shapr3D- adding planes in four taps, can even add planes through three points
@@redherring5532 yes shapr3d is great actually i need to try using it a bit more. I normally do 3d modelling for productiong on more heavy duty CAD programs like fusion, solidworks, rhino, and use blender for rendering/animations/modelling of non-production items or concepting. But precision modelling in blender is still something i struggle with. Adding workplanes is just something that really enables sketch-based modelling be powerful. With introducing an addon like that in blender, it just seems like a natural future step to look into, which i'm sure the developers are thinking about.
To everyone: Have fun! and have a little patience with CAD Sketcker its 100% going to have some growing pains but the more people share the news, report bugs and devs join the better it's going to get 🤗
10/May/22 - Coincident point joining is now a reality plus MANY other things. Join the discord to stay in the loop! Maybe take a look at this video too: th-cam.com/video/V452ModEqqo/w-d-xo.html
This is awesome man !! I've been waiting this for so long ! Thanks
Great work guys, I'm not a CAD guy but it looks fun, I'm definitely gonna try and learn it 😊
That's a plug in that can totally change Blender's world once again! Great job guys!
This is the most important add-on ever! Thank you !
I can't believe you made it free!
As a solidworks professional, I find this add on for blender incredibly powerful and exciting! Having a constrained cad tool that creates meshes directly is very cool. While both Solidworks and Fusion 360 are capable of surface based cad, and Fusion can even work with meshes directly, that is not the main purpose of those tools so the workflow can be really awkward. Blender though is purpose built for meshes. Sketches and constraints really takes Blender to the next level.
Yes, it's time people realise blender can do, what all other CAD's could.
THIS IS INSANE! I've been waiting for this for about 4 long years. I've bought lots of blender add-ons and hard surface tutorials, but it's hard to get my head around. I have 20 years of CAD modeling experience and the parametric way is the fastest and most editable with included precision.
If this is done right, the implications will be huge.
I'm joining everything and will get involved in development even with my limited skills!
Why not try freeCAD?
@@leonlionheart5927 Why learn 2 clunky programs when you can stay in one...
@@leonlionheart5927 freecad is very confusing, i have no idea how that works... have you tried it and compared it to an industry standard or are you just piping an opinion about software you've not used?
so i assume people want it in Blender cos they know how to use Blender right
@@leonlionheart5927 Mainly convenience and direct interoperability with Blender's absolutely gigantic feature set. I just want CAD features for their convenience and ease of use as a hobbyist solely focused on digital results.
@@DarkShroom Solid Edge is also a nice alternative. I like them because it is focusing on construction blender is huge and have tons of functions that I don't really need (yet). No, I havn't compared it to industry standard like e.g. CATIA or similar stuff. I just don't have the money for that. However Blender develops fast and become more and more interesting maybe I will give a deeper look at it. Thx for your comment.
Amazing work guys, congratulations! Another development that helps CAD people to adopt Blender for modelling is that Revit '23 can now insert and cleanup (automatically remove tesselation lines, maybe something to do with coplaner faces?) obj files (both in projects and Families). A lot of CAD people can't make the transition into Blender because it can't natively make technical drawings. This is a massive shame for such a fantastic modelling program.
For the time being, there is FreeCAD for CAD modeling. But I'm not architect so I can't really recommend.
They also act like you will never be able to make such drawings, even though addons like these will enable that to happen VERY soon. They don't know how many things can just be added or modified in Blender with addons.
Being a Blender user and a FreeCad user, I would love to see this addon up and running.
Thank you for your time and effort!!
hey same!!!!
For me this is a game changer. The biggest obstacle for my diving into Blender was the very "loose" approach to modelling.
The 2D constraint system already looks better than F360 have managed after half a decade! Brilliant work.
Excellent.
Long overdue.
Never understood why the open source community required two seperate 3D modelling tools.
Especially when splitting time and development resources instead of combining it.
That is of course, on the proviso CAD sketcher will remain open source & free.
Lots of packages start out that way to get market share, then suddenly go private, once its effectively cornered the market with a must have tool.
Blender is polygon based. The model resolution depends on the number of polygons it has. A true CAD program (ex. FreeCad) is Nurbs based which is mathematically precise. You don't loose precision no matter how deep you zoom in. These two format are not exactly interchangeable. This is analogous to Raster vs Vector in 2D graphics systems.
@@alihms Isnt that the equivalent of demanding modellers write in machine code rather than C++ though ?
IMHO, that is kind of missing the point.
Granted, freehand solid vertex modelling is often desired.
But sometimes a higher level shape modelling is often desired, with an abstraction layer between.
One forces the user to physically model the number of polygons used.
One method does not and can leave the software to automate the polygon count by scale.
Basically, just because you want a vertex mesh as a final product, doesnt mean you have to work at the vertex mesh low level.
Nor do you meed to store the structure as a vertex mesh model.
Blender Guru shared this in an email, I look forward to using this in the future, so happy we have this now.
How do u subscribe to Blender Guru?
AMAZING. this is what I've been wanting. I only understand parametric CAD modelling not blender style modelling/sculpting so this will help so much.
As someone who started out modeling in Cinema 4D and now uses Solidworks for work, I MUCH prefer Solidworks for any hard surface modeling projects. I love the parametric aspect of Solidworks and the geometry it creates is damn near perfect when exporting to Unreal Engine.
This has lots of promise. The more I can stay in Blender for my modeling ,the better.
The tool that I've been waiting for. Hoping this will grow into something truly useful for at least a light CAD design work.
This is amazing! I did CAD for 5 years and one of the huge hurdles in going from something like Inventor or Solidworks to Blender was a lack of constraint design. Huge potential here, very excited!
oooh! As someone who's been banging my head into the brick wall learning curve of FreeCAD without any progress, I am very intrigued to see an approach in Blender that may work more intuitively... or at all.
I know the struggle. I have just tried modelling something simple in FreeCAD another time just the other day and it failed without explanation, this time right in the sketch solver, which is not a component i had issues with before. But i've had so many mystery failures before. I repeated the same steps, it failed again. Then i repeated the same steps in FreeCad LinkStage3 (aka Realthunder's fork) and it WORKED.
I have had situations where i had reproducible issues like that several times before, and once i decided to report a bug, but it was impossible, i was supposed to create a forum thread first before filing on the developer issue tracker. I did, i uploaded my files, made a full description of steps, and as a result, a helpful francophone forum member (so there was a language barrier) tried ever more convoluted and difficult to understand ways to rescue my project; but i could not get a simple answer out of the forum whether what i'm seeing is a bug that i'm allowed to report on the issue tracker, or whether it's supposed to behave like that for some hard reason. I asked explicitly. It was seriously heartbreaking, like, if it's a bug, OK, it'll get fixed eventually, if there's a reason, OK, i can work with that, but like, uh, what, nothing, i'm at loss for words.
I have had this sort of a mixed success with FreeCAD main upstream branch in the past, but i haven't run into a problem with LinkStage3 yet. Like sure it's as convoluted, concept-heavy and opaque as the upstream, it inherits all of the inherent issues, but at least everything i throw at it just works. I have also done complex designs in Fusion and while that's a lock slicker and smoother, i actually can't say for certain which of them i like more, since FreeCAD has a lot of inherent power and functionality, like a LOT.
So yeah you can learn FreeCAD, you can follow tutorials, it's all entirely possible, and it's got some massive benefits, but please use Realthunder's fork, you can do all the same steps, the same tutorials apply. From what i hear, in a couple years, it's planned to integrate that fork back fully into upstream FreeCAD, but they're quite slow.
Whether Blender will ever be as smooth to use as a real CAD, i don't know... but it's an exciting development.
Yup, freecad is a different beast which quite hard to tame.
After spending months giving FreeCAD my best shot using it both personally and for work, I finally got just too damned frustrated by it and switched to Fusion360. It's too unstable, too clunky, and stunningly obtuse.
@@SianaGearz I second to that , LS3 is the way to go. I can se some benefots in cad in blender but what about tech drawings, what abbout assemblies? I once trued to learn blender and it gave it up beacause it was clunky and unwieldy as hell and stayed with 3dstudiomax
@@foootz haha I went the opposite way and switched from the clunky 3DS Max R3 to a much more direct and artistically helpful Blender 2.0a more than 20 years ago! Blender is very unusual but once you're in its workflow, it works with you. Back in the day it was all about printing out the keyboard cheat sheet and learning it. Now it's got more flexibility and discoverability but retains the same workflow.
This is the best news ever , i was waiting for this to happen, its a great news thanks Maker keep the great work.
YES! Finally a complete open source CAD solution. Blender has been poised for this for so long and I've been praying that someone would adapt it for this. If FEA applications are also made available based on this, that would be a dream come true.
This looks incredible! What a fantastic tool! precision engineering which you can then bring the entire Blender toolset to bear on. This is huge!
YES! I've been studying AutoCAD and will be graduating in Computer Drafting Technologies December 10th! This is amazing news and cannot waiting to start playing with this program over the summer to start making stuff in blender!
This is absolutely amazing! I've been looking for since leaving CAD for blender! I enjoy modeling the way blender is typically used but sometimes I want exactly what I can measure with my calipers. I'm amazed at how it works as I'd expect it would and I really can't wait to go back to constraints, entering values, and using sketches and work planes like typical in Inventor/ Fusion 360. Fantastic job everyone and best of luck on future progress! I'm looking forward to it!
Thank you for this add-on! Another step ahead for blender being an AIO software! Its truly amazing how a large community can achieve such a large feat with creating and upgrading an amazing program like blender! FOS software is amazing! Even though some add ons arent free, its still worth to pay for blender add ons than buying expensive subscription based software!
Nice! I think it is time for more CAD-like addons in blender. There are tons of animation addons, texturing, character modeling, etc. but there is a shortage in engineering design in blender. It is a big opportunity for programmers and software developers. Thanks
This looks amazingly promising. I design a lot of my cabinetry and furniture for my clients in Blender before production and having real CAD abilities directly in Blender would be a huge time saver and improve the workflow by not having to jump between Blender and a CAD program. Looking forward to the further development.
This is so similar to Solidworks, amazing addon, I'll definitely give it a try! Congratulations
I really liked this initiative, I'm Brazilian and I'm going to share with a facebook group about blender here in Brazil. but I wanted to congratulate you on the great adon
Love it and can't wait to use it to get that sweet 3D printing pipeline going!
Have fun! and have a little patience its 100% going ot have some growing pains but the more people report bugs and dev join in the better it's going to get 🤗
This brings me back to my first candle holder 20years ago on solidworks.
So glad this came out I have to redesign the interior of the new apartment we're buying and I'm going to have so much fun.
This is looking great! Hope they add printing sheets/layouts, which is standard for CAD programs. This keeps getting overlooked in all the blender CAD plugin's I've seen so far; until it's addressed, blender will be of limited use in arch/eng cad work.
Been waiting for this for what seems like 25 or 30 years! Awesome
This is amazing, Ive been waiting for something like this for ages!!!
ABOUT TIME!!!!! you have no idea how long I have been waiting for this! And how excited I am!!!!!!
This is incredible. Thank you for all of your hard work!
i remember 5 years ago trying to find a Cad add on to Blender. Now it's here Nice!!!
Holy Moly! Where do you go with Geometry Nodes today? That's amazing you can build something like that in Blender. As for bugginess, it can't be worse than FreeCAD. ;-)
Thank you so much for introducing this.
This is a wonderful opportunity for people who want to work in blender, having experience in CAD and not in blender. This is going to be ground breaking.
Now let's get the freecad programmers on this and recycle any useful bits of code so we can have a one stop shop for everything 3D in one place.
cant wait to use blender for literally every creative and design work
at 7:13 When I left click the object disappears. How do I fix that? I am using version 0.27.1
Nevermind, mesh was hidden under 'View Object Types' by default
@@SnifterRoux thanks for this. I was having the same issue, and ur comment saved my day 🙂
Wow this is awesome. It's about time this happened. Good job everyone involved in making this happen!
As a CAD engineer, it is so awesome to see blender getting cad sketcher considering I have been considering to learn blender to consider it's animating and rendering quality for my cad renderings etc. (Lot of consider lol)
This add-on looks amazing. I'm super impressed and psyched to use this new tool. The potential of this boggles.
After installation and then following this tutorial, I started by clicking "add sketch" and the 3-plane thing that appeared was about 50 times larger than my entire model and screen view. I have a default scene set up to millimeters and the default cube is 10mm on a square plane that is 100mm. I wonder if there's a way to set up the default size of the 3D sketch plane thing.
Upon drawing the sketch, the dimensions were placed with super long leaders, the arrows would not drag, and the number values are huge, like 100mm tall. The construction line appeared as solid despite the property box being selected. I'm betting that the issues I'm having are some sort of scene scaling thing. I have unit system = metric, units scale = 1, and length set to mm. That's right isn't it?
Unit scale must be 0.001
@@plane9182 Thank you, that solved everything. Now the sketch planes and dims appear with sensible sizes and are easier to select. I had to edit the values in all the object modifiers, rescale the X/Y/Z positions of all objects, etc You know, all the usual stuff. I wonder if there's an add-on that can rescale entire scenes! I guess the lesson is to set the unit scale correctly from the start. Also, Jonathan already posted a video on scaling a scene for precision modeling so it's not like I wasn't told previously.
one of the best addon so far available... hope it continue to evolve, hope it will have a sweep to rail function soon
Amazing! Blender needs to role up the CAD world!
I am curious if and how this will work together with CAD Transforms.
It doesn't seem to have any integration with cad transforms because the sketcher entities aren't regular mesh objects that standard add-ons can affect in any way
Back in school i was good in cad, and now im leaning blender. Seeing this both favorites programs togheter makes me want to give it a try. Its just awesome.
This fills my soul with joy.
This could really make hobby cad way more accessible.
No more monopoly by f360
Wooooowwww, truly fantastic!! I haven't had a chance to explore it yet, but what I've seen has already blown my mind. Once again, Blender has grown because of the dedication and vision of its community, so congratulations!
I love you...really, this is what I was looking for from a while. The first step to replace all the Autodesk power, by using blender for litterally everything. Cad, BIM...omg the dream start to be true...one step after the other
thanks!
The Project is amazing! Thank you all for doing that!
So I've been using this a little bit today, and for anyone who was still doubting it, this is the real deal! I'm personally just as excited as everyone else seems to be for this, I just love how hlorus got the approach "right" IMHO, by combining the best aspects of existing Blender mesh tools (modifiers) with a fully parametric constraint-based approach for sketching! I'll keep using this from now on, and I'll be more than happy to contribute if I find some bugs or missing features (I happen to be more of a dev than a CAD user)!
THIS is what we've been waiting for! A Game Changer for sure! Kudos!!!!!!!
about 60 years after writing first CAD drawing program, now it is also available in Blender, amazing!
Seriously thanks for this! So much less awkward that Fusion 360. This is going to help me immensely with some projects I've had on the back burner for a while!
as a person who both uses blender and solidworks. i can say this is going to take on industry pretty easily since both blender and the addon is free and working very gooooood
yumm delicious 😋🤣, congrats to all blender developer and anyone involved 👍👍👍
I have been waiting for this for years! Long time polygonal modeller, sculptor, then procedural modeller. This has so much potential.
God this such a unique addon guys!!! One of the very best addon i have ever seen! Keep the good work! I will support this to make it even better!
You got one more subscriber, as a CAD designer I always wish for this moment!! Blender and FreeCAD is what I love about an open source platform.
Contribution towards this project was a no-brainer. This Is huge.
Downloaded and contributed what I could, (this project is so awesome it deserves way more than my meagre, donation, trust me, so please support these guys as much as you can!) couldn't be happier, CAD sketcher is a very exciting development
Nice! For me the tangent constraint is very useful! Thank you very much!!
Absolute game changer for 3D printing simplicity.
I am wildly excited to see this and use it. I got into Blender solely for the purpose of 3D modelling with the intent of printing precision parts for our business. Being able to use this constraint-driven type of modelling without the extreme awkwardness of CAD Transforms will be such a blessing. Can't wait for the future videos!
this needs to be made viral
This immensely help with the accuracy of physics simulations.
Really happy to have discovered that addon. I cat say anything else that I am 1000% supportive of this amazing project and can't wait to help. Thank you for your work
Hot dang! And this is still in development, yet it is THAT awesome? Dayum! I've played a bit with FreeCAD and seeing sketching come to Blender (and with datum planes and integrating so well, no less) is just amazing. Kudos to the authors.
I am so thankful for this! A very big thanks to the developers!!! Alhumdulillah!
Wow! This is a breakthrough in parametric modelling with Blender. I am looking forward to seeing closely the development of this Add-On. As a mechanical designer I see a lot of potential in it, specially during concept design to make quick geometric modifications without the need of exporting a model from a CAD software and importing it to Blender for materials preview. Keep up the good work. This is really inspiring. Congratulations!
Marvelous idea !
I'm amazed how fast and good Blender is expanding thanks to is community.
Thank you very much to you
This is huge. This is bigger than Blender going open source. CAD is a way bigger industry than artistic 3D modelling.
Oh dear! Please don't stop developing and supporting it. It would be so great to have such functionality in standard blender one day. It is a dream come true to have single software eg to desing and render the 3d printing.
Man ive been waiting for this day for a long time. Even something close to sketchup would be great
this is a dream come true. I hope many devs will participate!
As someone who has been meaning to get around to learning both some basic modelling and basic CAD for some time now, this is such a wonderful marriage! (and someone whose gradually going more and more militant about FOSS) I'll definitely give this a go next time I need to edit a 3d print, subscribed.
holy lord damnit you did it and you hella nailed it ! thx for sharing such a tool on blender its been years i think loads of us are tweaking around addons to get a proper "CAD" workflow !
I am really happy to see this. Although Blender is not a CAD program competitor, I would be nice have a limited CAD tools with Blender.
Realy amazing so the new developments are high curiously waiting
Well... I just added 2 circles and constrained them with a distance.... I'm already in love with this addon! 😍
This is amazing, you’re doing the lords work.
Oh, boy. This is absolutely huge.
I like the videos. This compliments open source movement and integration of 3D printing.
Just what I was waiting for to be able to start using Blender on serious projects. Hope this addon sees continued development!
Awesome add-on been waiting for something like that 💪🏼💪🏼
This changes everything forever! I just started learning FreeCad, but this is fantastic news!
amazing work guys. i really love blender community
I am so excited for this! Cad in blender! so cool!
Very very impressive. I am a programmer and a hobbyist 3d explorer for 7 years. Will try to contribute to this addon. Seems very promising.
I've learned cad and I want to learn blender... This changes everything
I was looking for something like this a month ago and ended up getting a couple paid plugins that didn't quite do what I needed and were buggy or unsupported in latest blender. So glad something like this is free and open source! super excited
Thank you . Very useful
I have been wanting this forever! This is huge!
Finallly! Blender starting to make sense all of a sudden...
So powerful, felt like MOJO JOJO after installing this plugin! :P
Haven't heard that name in years
Best Thing in the World. Such a huge and cool plugin. It looks great
got to admit i got excited at the title now im just anxious to get home
OH MY GOODNESS!!! It's finally happening!!!!!!
How awesome. I hope the development goes well for you.