[Bf-committers] Blender for mechanical usage

Early Ehlinger early at respower.com
Thu Nov 2 17:24:19 CET 2006


M. Bashir Al-Noimi wrote:
> so i ask and suggest to you to expand special version of Blander for Mechanical usage, can we do that ?
Blender is open source, so there's nothing to prevent you from doing 
this other than time & skill.  I'd love to commit to doing this, b/c I 
really enjoy drafting and haven't found a decent open-source tool to do 
it with.  Unfortunately, I'm very bandwidth-constricted right now (read: 
my plate is full), so I don't think I'll be able to contribute other 
than in a requirements gathering capacity.  Hopefully somebody with 
similar interests (perhaps you?) can lead the charge in getting 
something written...

What features would you say are missing to make Blender usable as a 
mechanical design tool?  I believe 95% of what's needed is already 
there, so Blender represents a phenomenal starting point to produce such 
a beast.  On my list would be the following (some of these may already 
be there - let me know please!):

* real world units - metric/SI preferred for internal representation, 
with conversion to/from US Standard (ft/inch) in the UI
* numeric entry - "this item must be 2.3m long" - it'd be much better to 
be able to type this in than rely on the grid.
* import/export .DWG format.
* a special "blueprint view", similar to AutoCAD's notion of paper space
** correctly scaled, printable view, with render to pdf, printer, etc.
** multiple pages
** add dimensions and other notation to a drawing
** easily insert cross sections of a model on a blueprint page

-- Early Ehlinger, President, ResPower, Inc.


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