let's add on some precision features what's up i'm jonathan and welcome to maker tales where i'm
showing my maker journey to help you go further in yours so don't forget to subscribe and hit that
little bell icon to never miss an opportunity to keep making this video is all about continuing on
our setup of blender 2.91 but this time through the power of add-ons add-ons are little code
snippets that you can add to blender to give it extra features and because blender is powered by a
huge amazing community there are loads of add-ons for precision modeling this here are the ones that
i'm going to be using throughout the course and the ones that i personally use for my own blender
precision modeling so here we are on a fresh new blender file now it doesn't matter if the file
is new or not you can add and take away add-ons in any file in blender so first of all i want
to introduce you the concept that there are two types of add-ons for blender one type of add-on
is shipped with blender and is part of the blender code and the other add-on is external of blender
and can be added into the blender code so first of all let me show all the internal add-ons that
come with blender how to install them and how to find out more information about them
so we're going to go to our favorite place currently which is up here in our preference
menu so we go edit preferences and you will see add-ons now you're going to see that there is
loads of add-ons here and many of them you probably will never use i certainly haven't
so this is how you go ahead and install an add-on i want to install one add-on here that's
called measure it we're going to click it right there and lo and behold that's it installed so if
you're wanting more information about add-ons you can always go to the add-on itself here
click the little drop down arrow and here you will see documentation and to report a bug
and where it is within blender itself so this is inside of the 3d view on the side bar on the view
tab so this is my 3d view the sidebar is here you can also open this up with n so if go in here n
opens up this sidebar or you can click this little arrow here if we go to view on this little drop
down you will see down here we now have measure it tools let's go back over to our preferences
and now let's uncheck measure it and you'll see that the add-on has been removed
so it's that easy to add in and take out add-ons that are built in with blender so these are
add-ons that are shipped with blender so like i just mentioned if you come up with any problems
or you want to know how exactly to use this add-on click the documentation and that will take you to
the wiki of the add-on or if you have a problem with the add-on go ahead and report it as a bug
usually every single add-on internal or external will have a wiki or some sort of page where you
can discuss the problems and try and find solutions for them so now that we know how
to add internal add-ons let's go ahead and add all the internal add-ons that i personally use
right here on the right you can see these are all the add-ons that i am going to be installing
so you can use the search bar here to type in so the next one here is the stored views so let's go
type in store and we can turn that on now don't worry because i very much am going to be going
through all of these individually but i just want to add them all in for now then later on through
the course i will be going through each one of these so we can learn exactly what each one is for
in total you should have measure it stored views extra objects bolt factory export and import dxf
tiny cad mesh tools bool tool align tools 3d print toolbox modifier tools and f2 so now that we have
installed slash activated all of our internal add-ons now i want to show you all the different
shapes and flavors of external addons we're going to be keeping this simple to only three
because that's all i really add that are external but i want to also show you all the pitfalls
that can come from external add-ons so first of all where do you get these external add-ons
so external add-ons usually come from a website this here is my own add-on outlined to svg and
i'm going to download this one right here from my download file here now what i'm going to do
it's opened up a dropbox unorthodox sure but what we're going to do is just hit download up here
and then we'll sort the file out later now you can also get it in places like gumroad this here is
cad transforms for blender this is probably the number one add-on we're going to be using
for pretty much the entire course so i really suggest that you give this guy a tip
doesn't have to be now but later on down the road when you realize just how useful this is
give this guy a tip because he's made it completely free and it changes everything
so this one you can just download here for free and then i also just want to quickly show you
blenderartist.org this forum will have everything that you could possibly ever need really for
blender because there is everything from precision modelers to renderers to riggers they're all here
so if you're looking for an answer to a question it's probably here and if you're looking for an
add-on there's probably somebody who's already created a post either requesting it for it to
be made or that it's already been made with that said let's go ahead and take a look at the files
that we've just downloaded so yes these here are the files that we've downloaded the outline to svg
and the cad transforms this one here is linked down in the description and i wanted to bring this
here because it's one that i use a lot maybe not really for precision modeling but it can
be useful when you're doing precision modeling because it sets up an isometric camera for you
so let's go ahead and go through each one of these and show you a little hurdle that you might not
have expected so first of all you get add-ons as zip files as they're showing as books here so
they're using winrar linked in the description as well and or they can come just as a python file so
this is a python file this is a zipped file of cad transforms let's go ahead and let's export this
quickly i'm going to export it just say here and you'll see oh brilliant it comes into one folder
and inside of this folder is all the bits and bobs that we need now we don't need to export it
i'm just doing that to show you something i also want you to take note that the cad transforms has
no spaces this one has spaces usually add-ons come without spaces so now let's go ahead and extract
this one and you'll see that it's come with a readme file and yet another zip file within it so
that is a big catch 22. if we tried to install this file just as it was it would not have
installed because it had a zip file within a zip file some people like myself give files
like this so now if we were to extract this one here you're gonna see it just goes straight into
this folder here that has all the information that we need so let's put that back to just that
one zipped file we no longer need this one this is the one that has too many files in it
right this minute so let's remove that so now we have our three files that we're going to install
so let's go ahead and install these installing these are really simple it's almost the exact same
workflow with one small difference we're going to go into edit preferences add-ons and then up here
you're going to see install we're going to click this then we're going to navigate to where it is
so here's the file and you will have this little zip for the zip files and this one for the python
so let's go ahead let's click the python one let's hit install add-on and you will see
it goes blue down here that's it installing and then once it's installed it's been put into
here but it might not just pop up so let's go here let's type in iso and here it is create iso cam so
as you've seen it's already been activated and on the drop down it's all the information
we're wanting you're going to see there isn't a wiki or a report bug there is a remove though
and for this particular add-on there isn't any documentation and there isn't any reporting
because it's an add-on that has been fixed by the community and it's not currently actively
developed so it's very much just a file that's been thrown here right left and center because
honestly it's it's sort of broken in its legacy so let's go ahead and let's install the other add-ons
so install we're already in our file let's do our outline to svg actually no let's do
the card transforms first so installing this we get that blue line that the module is being
installed and it's been installed and it's popped up now we have to activate it by clicking this
here and now just something that i want to point out about all these add-ons is there's a little
arrow next to them so sometimes these add-ons not only have the documentation and report bug
and remove but they have a whole bunch of other settings for the add-on itself now we will go
into this later on for cad transforms but i just want to point that out there
so lastly let's go ahead and install outline to svg installing outline to svg and now let's
click this one on now something i want to point out about outline to svg some add-ons like this
one that i've created has pre-requisites so this one here if you want it to work so if we go here
and we go to outline to svg you're going to see that it's needing something
this for me is needing the path to the inkscape installation so let's go ahead and give it that
so here we're at our program files inkscape and we're going to go to bin and then here
you're going to see there's lots of different inkscapes what we're wanting is inkscape.exe we'll
accept it and as you see now the add-on activates so to speak and that there is how to install
external add-ons now if we were to remove this it would be pretty much the same way going into edit
preferences looking up what we're wanting to remove and clicking this remove button now lastly
a little word of warning about add-ons all the add-ons that are built in with blender have sort
of been checked that they work with each other but sometimes you can get add-on conflicts so
sometimes when you click one add-on another add-on might overwrite either the shortcuts or how it's
actually functioning also keep in mind add-ons all have their documentation and wiki pages so if you
ever get stuck go in there and try and solve it there and lastly once you've done all your
fun within the add-ons remember once again to go over here and save your preferences
yes auto save preferences is on but i have had occasions where blender completely forgets
all the things that i've done within my add-ons with all these add-ons now activated we are one
big step closer to our blender modeling precision workflow yes adding this many add-ons can be
extremely daunting and especially overwhelming if you have no idea what they are and what they do
but i'm going to show you how i use them in my day-to-day precision modeling and i will show
you in the series later on i just wanted to get this out the way so that we weren't continually
adding add-ons throughout the course with that said a huge thank you to my patrons you guys are
absolutely awesome and it means the world to me it's the reason that i can do things like this
and if you think i'm worthy of your support are enjoying what i'm doing here i would love
to see you there too don't forget that we have a discord that's linked down in the description
thank you for watching keep making and let the quest continue