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CAD Tool: Blender Caliper Script

  Published by Bart on May 6th, 2006 in Python Scripts

Afbeelding 1.pngWorking with Render Reality, Macouno has published a helpful script designed to allow measurements in Blender. Especially useful for architects (see our previous post about CAD modeling), this script allows scalability, measurements in several units and even render time results.

A number of options are available and as shown in the gui below:

blender_cal_gui.gif

The script can perform many useful operations such as:

  1. Automatically clean old measurements when making a new measurement.
  2. Make measurements with or without creation of 3d measurement objects.
  3. Measure from mesh to mesh.
  4. Measure within a mesh from selected edge to edge, vertex to vertex, face to face, etc.

Check out the documentation and the thread on BlenderArtists.

While this script was originally developed commercially for Render Reality LLC, they agreed to release it under the GPL license.



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16 Responses to “CAD Tool: Blender Caliper Script”  

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  1. 1 Chrysophylax Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 9:09 am

    One of the scripts of the year… it's a must for all of us working with graphical presentatio in architecture!

  2. 2 AHAMD Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 10:35 am

    this is really a good script……i posted on elysiun.com for couple a days asking for a script like that and realy the script is good…….maybe it could use being interactive by changing the dimensions too, but it great.thanks.

  3. 3 Kidd J Madd Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 12:51 pm

    Very impressive & very cool they released under GPL. With the extensibility afforded by Python, is there any reason Blender could not become a fully featured CAD/CAM/CAE app?

  4. 4 Adam Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 4:14 pm

    Wouldn't CAM require some sort of hardware interface??

  5. 5 Chico Ortiz Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 7:23 pm

    Main Got! Simply AWESOME tool!.

    Thank you very much for this "piece of art" Macouno. If someday your going to visit São Paulo, Brazil, search me for the best Sushi/Sashimi

  6. 6 Chico Ortiz Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 7:24 pm

    I hope your not vegetarian…

  7. 7 Kidd J Madd Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 7:59 pm

    Adam => Good point, I guess I was thinking more of rapid prototyping and *.STL file generation. That said, it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to get a program to process final part dimensions into NC programs that define a series of NC operations. Not the initial intent of Blender, but I don't see why not.
    I'm more interested in potential integration of 3D mesh generation and FEA. It seems some motivated CS/Math/Engineering grad students could make quick work of the mesh generation. Once that was done, it's just a (potentially large) linear algebra problem.

  8. 8 Hai Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 8:00 pm

    Excellent! That is truly excellent, this is exactly THE tool I was looking for.

  9. 9 Adam Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 8:14 pm

    Kidd J Madd:
    ————
    That's what i was thinking… It is still a great script though, and would be great for cad (COMPUTER AIDED _DRAFTING_), you just can't cut it out.

    Also, I'm not speaking from experience, I'm not a machinist, and have only watched one once or twice, so I don't know. But i'm pretty sure it would be a usefull tool for drafting concepts and other. I doubt your going to put Autocad out of business anytime soon though.

    Although I sure would love to see that happen ;)

    ~Adam

  10. 10 advs89 Edit Link May 6th, 2006 at 8:20 pm

    Oops, I apparently don't post here enough… I mistook the website field for a subject field.

    Sorry about that…

  11. 11 naught101 Edit Link May 8th, 2006 at 7:32 am

    will this be included in future releases of blender?

  12. 12 Joe Edit Link May 8th, 2006 at 1:13 pm

    Hey guys. Thought I'd say Hi. I own Render Reality and thought this script would be good for the community. So, far, I've found it quite helpful during my model building. There are some enhancements in discussion though. I just realized that I overlooked the idea of measuring in one dimension only. So, that will probably need to be added soon. Glad you find it useful.

    Joe

  13. 13 Edu Edit Link Jul 8th, 2006 at 12:32 pm

    Very good and useful!!! but, to Blender 4.2 RC3, I had a python script error… :I

  14. 14 Jensen Edit Link Oct 7th, 2006 at 5:52 pm

    Thanks so much for the wonderful script.

    I appreciate Blender's existance and its unique capabilities to the design industry that I am in.

    Thanks. Cheers.

    I will try to test out this script soon.

    -BLENDER has my support- (Fast & realiable)

  15. 15 Marco Lourenço Edit Link Dec 8th, 2006 at 12:03 am

    Thanks so much for the useful script!

    MLourenco

  16. 16 Quantum Anomaly Edit Link Mar 4th, 2007 at 8:48 am

    Beautiful! This covers one of the things on my Blender wish list!
    Thanks Joe / Render Reality!

    I hope this gets built into future versions.

    -QA

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