Ability to import&convert CAD file(.Step .IGES) into polygon is very useful for 3D Visualize, concept art and 3D printing
Blender should support this feature.
5 Likes
I absolutely agree that this is an important feature missing from Blender.
Our company is currently using 3dsmax, but with all the doom and gloom on the horizon, we are seriously considering the switch to Blender. Now, we are mostly working for the mechanical engineering industry, and 90% of our projects rely on the use of CAD data provided by the clients. Max has gotten pretty good at importing CAD data (most of the times in STEP format), especially regarding clean (explicit) normals and the ability to change import resolution. Many 3D transfer file formats, don’t handle normals well. FBX is one format that does handle it well (and imports cleanly into Blender), but tools like FreeCAD don’t allow FBX export.
So, as awesome as Blender is by now, it still needs a bit more love for the mechanical engineering field. I’m not necessarily talking turning Blender into a full CAD modeling tool (although ultimately that would be great, of course), but file format support for the most common CAD formats (which I’d say are STEP, IGES and SolidWorks) is direly needed.
2 Likes
it would be great to have STEP format support, also without the mesh-polygon conversion …
Through a primordial support of the Nurbs surfaces …
So little by little the devs would begin to create instruments able to edit these surfaces …
Compatibility with the meshes is not strictly necessary … these two worlds could coexist in the same environment.
1 Like
I agree with this request, and I’m kinda sad that it has few likes like this.
I’m in an engineering company, working with CAD like Siemens NX and PTC Creo. Both of them have some kind of render engine like Keyshot but there are things that you just can’t do there. Blender is so much powerful.
The workflow right now is not the best at all: I export the stl file but the mesh is heavy and not ready to be used with “smooth shading” activated (there are flipped normals and other problems). I’ve also tried some retopology tool like Instant Meshes but the output from those CAD are so bad that the work must be done by hand.
If I can just have an STP or IGS importer in Blender it would save me hours.
Yep the reason many people still use KeyShot is also this just drag and drop CAD files ready to go.
while blender actually have a lot better potentials like Evee+advance animationn but the link is missing here.