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Graphics
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| About five years ago I stumblled across the open source 3D content
creation suite Blender whilst looking for free cad software on the
freeware/shareware section of 3dlinks.com. With
some experience of
using AutoCAD and Solidworks in my day job I was looking for somthing I
could use at home to help design and plan projects for my hobby
engineering and CNC interests. |
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At
the top of the 3d
Links ranking I had a look at Blender and was amazed at the
capabilities of this community produced program. Whilst not
specifically a CAD program Blender has proved to be more than capable
at producing accurate 3D models of machine components and
further
more you can render the models to a high degree of photorealism and
animate their use.
As
you have
probably gathered whilst browsing this site my interests in Blender
aren’t typical of the active Blender enthusiasts who post
superb
artwork and animations on their forum’s and web site. My
current
interests are to use Blender as an accurate design tool to produce
engineering components. All the capabilities are there but most of the
guides and tutorials are aimed at a more artistic representation of a
product rather than a precision model.
Having
finished
the house extension detailed in the construction section my thoughts
are turning to ways to improve the CNC Router I built a few years ago
and Blender is the ideal design tool to use to build an accurate
virtual model before machining the new components. It’s also
a
good opportunity to log my design thoughts and methods of constructing
the models within blender concentrating on accuracy of modelling rather
than artistic use of the program. My notes and ramblings on this
project may help others to use blender as an engineering tool but
shouldn’t in any way be considered as a replacement for all
the
other guides and tutorials detailed on the Blender site. There is no
substitute for reading all the available literature and expanding your
knowledge of this program. |
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All Content © 2007 - 2013 Robert Burke, unless otherwise stated.
Please contact me if you would like to use any of this content.
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