Hi. First of all, thank you for your hard work! As a student majoring in architecture, I have watched your D7000, T66424, T66337 as well as snap-utilities addon.
I have 2 questions in total.
Would this project go into master as a whole anytime soon? While watching your hard work, I was concerned a little. Since (as far as I know) core developers’ interests seemed to be focused on sculpting and rendering as described in 2020-blender-big-projects. I also found that many snap system suggestions and proposals were written for years, but was not implemented up to now(compared to its code complexity). I really hope that Blender developement fund growth makes room for precision modeling improvements(like you mentioned)… What do you think about it at the current state?
Is the reason you’re not selling snap-utilities addon anymore is because you intend to merge that features into the Blender master build? If so, do you have any plans to distribute the addon again only until when these features are fully merged into the master?
As a student majoring in architecture, I used SketchUp, Rhinoceros, AutoCAD and currently trying to accept Blender as my main program. The only problem is snapping and base-point transformations…
You need the Tinycad addon (built-in) Then use the “Vertex at intersection” operator por each pair of edges that would intersect, select the closest vertices and the new created one for every intersection -> merge to last.
@copenhagenjazz, I think we are a lot waiting for ages these abilities!
Tinycad have useful function but it is still a work around. It would be great to have a direct snap with slide for that, I hope this big lack will be tackle soon!
Here is a post I made some time ago:
Well in this case you just need to use regular move instead of edge slide. Make a new transform orientation in the direction of the slanted edge and then move. This basically replaces what edge slide is doing but lets you use snap. Then move the upper vertex down and you can snap to the horizontal line. When the vertex is in position you snap the other one and repeat with the second pair.
Edit. hmm seems it’s not working because when using the new transform orientation it snaps in that orientation and that doesn’t snap correctly. So it seems the addon is the only way possible.
He is the author of Archipack.
As for me, I am pretty much tired from having snaps as addons.
All of them have issues and limitations, and this one is no exception.
well guys, I think it is useful that I paste the task on precision modeling here, since it is updated, so as to give the opportunity to peek at the milestones to be reached and maybe revive this thread, at least for the moment we enjoy the hope of what it will come
@mano-wii great to see an update on the Modeling Module showing a timeline for precision modeling! Do you think it will be done until November? Everything listed? Just a part?
@mano-wii, excellent work on the snapping improvements so far. Thank you for the huge quality of life improvements you’ve brought since starting this project.
For “T66426: Edge and Vertex sliding: snapping improvements” the people who requested this feature are expecting this it to allow for snapping in a particular local or world axis. So, for instance, if I want to snap to only the z location of the target vertex, I will drag the z gizmo or press the z key when sliding along an edge and the vertex will project the axis of motion along the edge to the z location of the target - the vertex slides until it reaches the xy plane that the target vertex lies on. The current state of things has the vertex snapping to the point where a ray perpendicular to the edge intersects with the vertex. So far, this has only been useful to me when the edge I’m sliding on is parallel to one of the primary world axes.
The image below depicts the current behavior of the edge slide snap which snaps perpendicular to the edge as shown in red. If I press the z key during this transform while having World Coordinates selected, I would expect the vertex to snap in a location that lies in the xy plane of the target vertex - shown in blue.
There are many things that can be improved in Blender for precision modeling.
Making the Edge Slide a complete tool with new features is not a priority right now.
In my opinion, the proposed solution with Z would only work when we have a snap point and could be confusing otherwise or when we are snapping to an edge or face.
Also, this limitation can easily be worked around if you create an edge or a face aligned to the desired plane:
While I’d prefer a more user-friendly approach to respecting coordinate systems, what you show seems to be a fair workaround. Please keep this on your radar for future tuning of the edge slide snaps. It really is a convenient way to work.
I’m really happy with the way the edge snapping is working after your fix. This is perfect and seems like it could be used in some cases to get what I’m expecting from edge slide.
Do you mean this option is only possible and interesting when snapping to vertices? If so, I agree. For the record, we are not talking about changing the default behaviour of vertex and edge slide, we are proposing selecting the axis of sliding to be an option to activate while running the operator. We can choose not to use it and avoid any possible confusion about what selecting an axis is intended for. I see that using a gizmo would be more convenient and understandable, but many of us never use gizmos and the functionality, if added, should be reachable without the use of gizmos, despite how confusing could it be.
Thank you for the workaround, it’s something to keep in mind. Straight true for the face, for the edge the target have to be aligned on the same plane with the edge of slide, but ok. Anyway I think that it shouldn’t be necessary to create additional geometry for snapping if enough snapping targets in the form of vertices are present in the model, and changing the snapping mode every time I have to do this is another step I would avoid if possible.
For now I understand it is not a priority and that we have workarounds just because of your work on improving all the snapping system, so thank you and please continue because you are doing great.
I tried the edge slide snapping today and while the workaround works somewhat well (still has a quirky behavior), it would really be much nicer to be able to slide an edge in vertex snapping mode and just be able to constrain it to either the X,Y or Z axis.
I am really not sure if Blender ever can or should try to compete with a parametric CAD modeler.
Don’t get me wrong: Precision modeling is great and Blender benefits from everything we get in this regard but true volume object modeling is a whole different thing and workflow.
Maybe a better solution would be an improved development for something like FreeCAD and a Blender bridge.
I can tell you my opinion, I am a mesh modeller and cad modeller for some decades. Blender has all the potential to make working on it comfortable and fun. with a complete precision modeling and snap, if he add nurbs (breps) a little more serious and little else and the possibility of importing and exporting the step format (so that everything remains parametric), then everything else will come by itself over time, or even not, it doesn’t matter.
FreeCAD is full of utilities to do engineering things, for example I use it to prepare models for my CNC, but to modeling on it is very boring especially when compared to its closed source competitors. I think it will never have a real success on modelling, unless they decide to rewrite an interface and a modeling section that is more compact and solid and more understandable. I see FreeCAD comparable to Gimp, it has a certain power, it is usable, but it is boring and very uncomfortable when compared to photoshop or affinity photo … I hope I have given the idea.
