SpeedCut – Boolean modelling for Maya

STL is really only useful these days for 3D printing. No competent engineer would use STL for information transfer and designing. Origins, hierarchy, naming, all lost. OBJ is a littel better option, it at least stores UVs, but loses pivots in most cases. FBX is the best option, but again, is up to the software to export it if it is even supported by them. It’s also up to the software exporting to create UV’s if you are given a mesh, that’s a huge down side. But if I have a BREP or native file, I can create them upon import. The importer does it. No fuss, no unwrapping after the fact unless I need to compact and that’s about 5 seconds of work.

The problem is your solution is using mesh exported CAD data. There’s no flexibility in that, and it’s a huge time sink. When I’m talking about importing CAD data, I mean native files from SolidWorks, ProE, CATIA, Inventor, etc. Or at least the very least, STEP. Our clients would drop us if they had to export mesh just for us to illustrate or animate their products. That’s a workaround that wastes our times and our client’s money.

I use the nPower Translator plugin for more flexibility in editing and PowerMesh. Though it isn’t needed, as the built in 3ds Max importers (probably based on nPower) also create UV’s per trimmed surface; as solids for interactive tessellation at any time after import, or as a mesh, grouped by sub assemblies automatically, ready to rig and animate. I would still be able to do my job much faster with the native 3ds Max importers vs the workarounds needed for Blender. And yes, C4D also has a CAD importer as of R20, not flexible as having body objects in your scene, but still some useful settings. Blender does a lot of things well, here, it just does not even come close. Just fine here, is not good enough.

but is by no means suitable in the CAD/CAE world other than representing the final model

And that is what we do when we work with engineering models, we are not engineers and we don’t want to, so we just need the final model to work with it.

The problem is your solution is using mesh exported CAD data. There’s no flexibility in that, and it’s a huge time sink. When I’m talking about importing CAD data, I mean native files from SolidWorks, ProE, CATIA, Inventor, etc.

Yes, that’s not going to happen, and it does not happen in max either, when you import a Revit file in max it gets converted to goemetry, and it’s very bad geometry, not that in revit is better at all, but it gets converted.
In max there are not serious NURBS tools, neither in Blender or any other non-CAD software, the best tools out there in the non-CAD realm are the Maya ones.

I use the nPower Translator plugin for more flexibility in editing and PowerMesh. Though it isn’t needed, as the built in 3ds Max importers (probably based on nPower) also create UV’s per trimmed surface; as solids for interactive tessellation at any time after import, or as a mesh, grouped by sub assemblies automatically, ready to rig and animate. I would still be able to do my job much faster with the native 3ds Max importers vs the workarounds needed for Blender. And yes, C4D also has a CAD importer as of R20, not flexible as having body objects in your scene, but still some useful settings. Blender does a lot of things well, here, it just does not even come close. Just fine here, is not good enough.

So here we have two things:

– If you have such an stablished workflow and you work fine with Max, then no need to go to Blender, don’t use it, as I said before.

– In the case you want to use it, and you need such a translator, I already said the solution, as many other studios, you can arrange a groups of studios and people, or if your studio is big enough, you can hire a developer and create that importer, to be used in your own build, or to be implemented in Master for everyone to use it.
It will be cheaper in the long run.

Don’t wait until the Blender Institute implement something, make the implementation yourself.

At least STEP and IGES must be supported by Blender, they’re both industry standards, and anyone can and *should* support them.

if it SHOULD be supported and it’s so important (I don’t doubt it at all), and you WANT to use Blender, as I said, make the implementation yourself or organise a group of users to hire a developer to make such implementation.

I said it already, don’t wait until someone creates it, implement it yourself, that’s how Blender works an grows, with their users creations being adapted to their own workflow, and when something is good for everyone it gets implemented in master.

FYI, Max has 2 different built-in importers for these and a few other important formats, and it actually does a decent job most of the time. Last time I tried Blender, I was really disappointed to see that no single CAD format carrying anything else than mere vertex data was available.

I have Max, I worked with 3ds/max since year… I don’t know, 1998 maybe, and even knowing that, we are happier with Blender, it’s just works for us, maybe it’s not good enough for you 🙂

This has asked for in been on Blender wish list for years. I’ve found topics of people trying to import into Blender, only to be pointed to a cumbersome workaround with a shrug. Most of us are too busy with life to organize the development of something that should have been in it for years. Heck, I barely have time for the betas that I’m in.

First of all, then don’t use Blender 🙂

If you cannot be involved in Blender evolution or trying to participate in some development initiative that will benefit you, then simply don’t use Blender.

With that I don’t mean that if you use Blender you MUST participate in it’s development, but if there is something REALLY important to you, there will probably be a bunch of people that also finds this important, so you are not the one that has to organise the development, usually it goes as a collective effort, once you do a design document for such a feature, having clear targets, references to how it should work, and references to what does not work, then you will start finding people that will collaborate with you, because they are also interested on it.

In the end, if it is really SOOOOO important, just hire a developer, in the long run it will be far cheaper than keep paying Autodesk.

But if you don’t have time for all this, or don’t want to do anything of this, then use Blender as it is, but just asking for “I want blender to import this file format” won’t achieve anything at all. Maybe, if you are lucky, some other person would do what I told you, and you may get the importer, but maybe not.

But let’s be honest, that’s no different to Autodesk, I was asking for a fluid simulator, and SPH solver for particle flow, or a volumetric shader for mental ray, multithreaded particle flow or more stability for physics in particles for YEARS, and the result was the same, no solution given, not evolution, no nothing.

I was not able to do a single thing regarding that, because without some proper modifications to the actual mental ray implementation it was not possible, and the sph solver was a project to big for an small studio to tackle it.

What’s the difference with Blender?

If you REALLY need something, and the core devs don’t hear you, or don’t have time to tackle your priority, you can do something, the big efforts can be done between several people, like Mantaflow, thanks to Sebastian Barschkis and Nils Thuerey, I was involved with them in testing it and making builds a bit known and available to the general group of users to test it, while at first it was hard for people to try it because it required knowledge to build Blender, and the motivation of the developer was not so high due to the lack of users, since there was no one distirbuting those features, there was barely any user of them, all changed when I involved my self with them and started making mantaflow more visible.

Many things go that way, for example we take some old but cool developments that are half way into master, test it and try to rise the voice of many users, to rise their interest in the feature so it could be further developed or directly implemented into master, and we don’t take ANY development, but the ones we find important for our workflow (and some times others that are being asked by friends or other users).

Other example is Fracture Modifier, thanks to Martin Felke, who helped me a lot of times with a lot of things, we tested many features together, he implemented a particle mesher into fracture modifier for me (and any other user) to be able to mesh the SPH simulations done with Blender particles.
Now we have an OpenVDB mesher as a modifier in our build, and it’s able to mesh also particles, not just objects, it’s capable of doing CSG operations and other things, all thanks to him.

If you really need something, don’t wait until it gets done, consult a developer (not an addon developer but a C++ developer), check how big the project could be, evaluate it and if you or your studio don’t have the money try to arrange a crowdfunding project to achieve this.

Many non-blender users and many blender users don’t entirely understand how Blender development goes, it’s not a matter of waiting the main dev team implementing things, it’s an effort of every single user and every studio that uses Blender and wants a better Blender, not for others necessarily, but for them.

So it’s not a matter of asking “how can I import this cad file”
It takes more effort, design documents, prototypes, defined ideas and development projects, all that work that usually is done inside a company is done in the Blender Institute, but if you are interested in an specific project that is not clearly present in the Blender Institute plans you can organize the development of it.

Regarding the Revit, it’s CAD, maybe not mechanical CAD but architectural CAD, and the result is horrible, and yes in max with the Autodesk native importer, since it’s an Autodesk closed format, regarding the engineering/mechanical CAD with hierarchy, yes, we would not use STL for that of course, that is when other formats come into play, and the exporters in other packages are as bad as the CAD importers in Blender.

In the same way you miss the high quality importer in Blender. why not ask for an specific high quality exporter in the CAD software?

And yes, we ask our clients to give us the files in the proper format, we don’t work with proprietary formats, and our clients don’t have any problem with it.

As I said, IF you want to use Blender and need such importer, find a way to develop it or to push its development, and after the project has started if you want, propose it to be implemented in master, many people will support it and will be very happy with such initiative :smiley:

Of course if you don’t want any of the hassle this may be for you, then you are better off paying Autodesk, and if that is what you need, that’s perfect 🙂

It all depends on the specific user needs.