Discussions for "Better snapping and precision modeling"

[TheRedWaxPolice]

@clockmender

your video does not work for me, is there somewhere else I might find it please?

Which web browser? Weird.
Anyway, I uploaded to youtube, which killed the quality a little bit… lol

Cinema 4D measure & construction tool

Or download it if it’s hard to see in this video…

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@xan2622

Have you considered submitting your suggestion on Right-Click Select — Blender Community

Not sure it’s necessary…

[clockmender]

@TheRedWaxPolice

Which web browser? Weird.

Safari on MacOS - thanks for the YouTube - that works fine.

[ThatAsherGuy]

Definitely an idea worth exploring.

At the moment you can look at the 3D cursor as an empty that can be manipulated while editing other objects, without interfering with your selection(s). Building it up into something more complex (even if that complexity is really just a 1-7 vert pseudo-mesh) that can feed more data into gizmos and operators could give us a framework for implementing some of @clockmender’s ideas in a way that fits into 2.8’s active tool system.

The same idea could be applied to the suggestion of implementing object and collection pivots. Instead of having the singular scene cursor, we’d have scene, collection, and object cursors encapsulating various forms of transform data that could be used for aligning and manipulating selections. Access to these cursors could be limited to the cursor active tool, or via right click.

[clockmender]

@mano-wii and all others.

I offer my proposal for CAD Functions for destruction by my peers!

You can find my proposal here, as I cannot upload PDFs in this forum.

Let me know what you think, however bad that is… If you want more detail, let me know.

Cheers, Clock.

[no4me]

Please, just make snapping easy to use!

[bluesky]

Vertices can slide over the subdivision surface of the current polygon without adding a Subdivision modifier
Can also slide on a polygonal plane
As a complement to the vertex slide tool feature
Because sometimes moving the vertices does not want to change the shape of the polygon

[clockmender]

OK, so I looked again at my CAD Functions node and cut it down from 807 lines of code to 546, by making it more efficient and redesigning the functions, etc. I drew this part in under 5 minutes using my node:

Please repeat using traditional Blender techniques and post your timings. If anyone would like to try this node, let me know and I will upload the new version somewhere. You will only need Blender 2.8 and Animation Nodes…

No comments on my proposal yet, I must have stunned everyone into silence.

Cheers, Clock.

[nokipaike]

no one comments … but not because there is no interest, but because I think it is a bit difficult to have to know how to use the animation nodes and then hang out with your node-addon

[clockmender]

@nokipaike

I think it is a bit difficult to have to know how to use the animation nodes and then hang out with your node-addon

It’s just a menu of buttons and input boxes, no connections, no need to execute the node tree, just click the buttons. If someone wants to give me some pointers as to how to make this a normal add-on - with buttons in the UI, I will try to do that instead, at the moment I have no idea how to make add-ons.

Cheers, Clock.

[Alberto]

Ask that in the development subforum,

[clockmender]

Thanks, I have done that:

Making an Add-on for Precision Drawing Tools (CAD)

Introduction What started off as a request for help in making my initial work using Animation Nodes into an Add-on has grown significantly. After an enormous amount of work over four and a half months and an enormous amount of help here from so many people, we now have an Add-on that ships with Blender 2.82. Precision Drawing Tools Explained Artists tend to start with a primitive 3D form, then cut/extend/modify/etc. it into a final mesh. Dimensional accuracy is not necessarily the end goal of…

Cheers, Clock.

EDIT: It got moved to Python, my mistake… thanks @brecht

[clockmender]

See this thread:

Making an Add-on for Precision Drawing Tools (CAD)

OK, I have made some progress, albeit a small effort so far: [29] Here is the “Cursor Move” option added to the Vertex Menu and below the menu to move it: [02] In this example I have set the cursor to be 2m @ 45 degrees from the selected vertex in the X-Z plane. I need to work out how to call a common function that will be used for moving the cursor and moving vertices next. Thanks for the help chaps, I am making good progress. I used the Add-Object Template to get me going, along with the…

I am making progress to make my node an Add-on. So much to learn for my old brain to do this.

Cheers, Clock.

PS. I am trying to implement PEP 8 standards in my code…

[nokipaike]

good to know sir.
you can probably change the name to the other tread and update us on the progress on that …

As I understand it, your long experience in CAD applications can be very useful for blender comunity which is very lacking in this field.

[nokipaike]

just a reminder for a nice dream…

[1D_Inc]

Hello everyone!
I am Paul Kotelevets, better known as 1D_Inc, maintainer of CAD toolset, called 1D_Scripts.

You may know my GIF with teapot and Suzanne, that has gone viral a year ago.

CAD-like snapping objects (by basepoint)

It was a long before my B.A.S.E. concept proposal, but it’s high rate shows how much basepoint CAD snapping is really wanted.
In fact, this GIF was a key argument in the negotiations with Ton and developers, after which the process of research of snap improvements developments was accepted.

Nice to see it have been started.

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@mano-wii

3.3 - Keymap ability to Switch GX and GXX order because local transforms are used more often in a wide range of applications, such as historic restoration.

Well, it seems to be fixed in 2.8 already, GX and GXX are already switched there (local one takes priority).
So 3.3 can be easily removed from a list)

[1D_Inc]

@clockmender

I added a new “Set Angle” option whereby you select three vertices, the last one (active vertex) being the centre and the other two being the “legs”:

This system with legs is called “key”.
3D_Match tool, for example, uses 2 keys for transformation.

[clockmender]

@1D_Inc

This system with legs is called “key”.
3D_Match tool, for example, uses 2 keys for transformation.

Two vertices gives you an angle to horizontal, or relative to 0 if you like. My three vertex measure measure between three vertices that might not be planar in any view, or might not be relative to any axis as zero degrees, so I decided the two methods were necessary.

I still want to see these features in Blender to attract draughtsmen to the product. I will look at your thread later, sounds like this has been on-going for a while and needs to take off now!

Cheers, Clock.

[1D_Inc]

@nokipaike

just a reminder for a nice dream…

Looks like ruler/protactor tool?
The problem of displayed values that they are never precise enough.
So we prefer to use basic geometry for operations to hold precise values.
But in different time we made ability for different tools to show values)

• For example Sideshift stores length and direction of transforms, based on an egde.

• 3D Rotor/Scaler, that uses key for precise rotation and copying, and scaling between side lenghts differences of key - showing side lengths and angle of key.

• I also made thoughts about using protactor as a key in my previous proposal:
  https://developer.blender.org/T45734#506696

• Arc length is a bit controversal in mesh modeling, but there things going deeper.
  Here are Nikitron Tools)
  GitHub - nortikin/nikitron_tools: nikitron_tools

You may know, that I am maintainer of different scripts toolsets, So I work with and sponsors a lot of local developers, such as Bartius Crous (that wrote to me world famous F2 tool), Nikitron, as author of Sverchok parametric node engine for blender, Cfyzzz for 1D_Scripts, and so on.

It was generic collection of different scripts by Nikitron, so I asked him to write counter of volume / area / summ of selected edges length for Blender. Area and volume tools are writing their results per material in Blender text editor, so they form report (we were using in actual building design - area gives nice results)
So, arc length in mesh is actually, a summ of lengths of it’s edges)

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Well, I wrote this all to overview entire theme. Displaying tools can be out of the snaps scope, but there are a lot of things to generalize for total tool, and, maybe, to propose it)

[1D_Inc]

@clockmender

My three vertex measure measure between three vertices that might not be planar in any view, or might not be relative to any axis as zero degrees, so I decided the two methods were necessary.

Here is a nice video about keys in 3D_Match tool:

Blender 1D_Scripts cad toolset: 3DMATCH tool

[nokipaike]

you already know I’m a super-fan of your work…