Blender on Architectural Record
Blender is having a great time during this period, Project Orange is boosting development and some mid-high level artists are getting interested in using this amazing piece of software; so it seems that after years Blender is getting the right amount of popularity/visibility it’ll need to make a big step towards the professional audience.
Here you’ll find Blender listed at the second place right after Revit 8 by Autodesk (shame on me for writing down the name of the evil one :-D) in the “Tech Products” section. Maybe Architectural Record’s webmaster played around with the PROCAD 1.0 script by Japy which turns Blender in a usable 2D/3D CAD system (although I prefer the QCAD > dxf2svg > Inkscape > Blender workflow), I see no other reason to rank blender so high on an architecture-centric site leaving out 3D Studio Max/Viz and SketchUp (mea culpa, mea maxima culpa :-P) from the list than its price, or… well… maybe that guy is the greatest fan of Blender :-)
Federico “Lox” Lucignano
Well, another example for the great visualization skills of Blender. At any time the last Max oder C4D User will say that Blender is the better solution ;)
And there is so much potential! I use Blender for Product design (the most use C4D) – and it works excellent!
Simon
Thanks for the tip…
But do you know where to find a compiled version of dxf2svg (Linux or Windows) ?
Karpov
Great news ;-)
I think that the most important things for using blender in CAD world, is an implementation of a strong snap system and an internal renderer supporting GI.
Blender maybe will rule also on cad systems :-D
@ Karpov:
If You need it I will put a windows build online as soon as I find a few minutes to pack it up ;-)
…blender makes tha bits go tristate,
i think aswell that the snappig sytem is kind of unhandy for exact/fast 3D-CAD-work.
In my opinion the unit system is to unprecise. Making exact measurements is kind of hard in blender.
But of course blenders purpose is a different: quick modelling.
I would prefer better importscript imnprovements.
Often when i import files from max or autocad into blender, a lot of triangle-polys appear.
And for that i got to reedit a lot of the model (to prepare it for subsurface divisions)…
but hopefully one day leaving all the other interessting things behind, i got involved in python to…;)
I quote DavE on snap and import…
Ciao
I took the risky bet on blender for my visualization-business and have never regretted it since.
I hope that someone can translate the python script (which is refered to in the article) into english so i can understand, or at least try to understand how it works. I’m looking for an aplication to do some architectual art work. Maybe Procad can make my decision.
Twan
I think all of us using Blender as architect, designer,….we should have a place in Elysiun to push on Blender to have the minimum cad tools (maybe just a simple automatic vertex snap,or…). I’d like to quit also Rhino…
Dai Lox, ci metti in linea il tuo build windows ;-)
Karpov (Parigi )
Mhhhh, Interest in Blender CAD is rising…
Ok, I have a win build of dxf2svg (which makes a pretty cleaner job than OpenOffice Draw as a converter from QCad to Inkscape) and actually I’m in contact with PROCAD 1.0 script author to deliver an article and an English translation of this usefull tool.
So, have a little pacience and soon you all Blender-cadders-to-be will find a nice surprise here on BlenderNation ;-)
@Karpov: sorry, didn’t had time to pack everything up and post it here, I was working hard in the evening to deliver a win32 implementation of mmap & munmap for the CVS Repository (oohhhhh yes, I’m cool B-D, ok… stop with it :-P) and a new test build on which I’m still working (I’m trying to include some patches not compatible with current CVS).
Frederico,
thanks for letting me know of Procad. A translation will be nice of course but I ain’t going to wait for it : Google is my friend. ;)
I can’t wait till I can show off Blender at work.
Jean
Wow. I just wanted to say that it feels really nice for a piece of my work to be displayed as a thumbnail for an artical. No matter how small.
Brent
has anyone found this dxf2svg? I have been looking and I cannot find it for the life of me.
Has anyone ever made any progress with using Blender for Architectual Designs? I’ve had some problems getting Blender to import DFX files with version 4.5. I would like to use Blender 3D professionally for CAD work.
I stand corrected… Version 2.45 is the version that I’m using. I talked my boss into letting me use the program on a trail bases just to see how far we can go with the program. If I convert the files as SVG’s, are they as accurate as DWG files?
Here’s the link to the specific article:
http://archrecord.construction.com/features/digital/archives/0506digprod-1.asp
If you want to produce photorealistic renders for architectural visualization LuxRender is a great plug-in and external renderer for Blender. See luxrender.net for more info. You can use it for “for physically correct, unbiased image synthesis. Rendering with LuxRender means simulating the flow of light according to physical equations. This produces realistic, photographic-quality images.”