so i've been teaching precision modelling and blender for quite some time now in fact i've
got some free courses down in the description or if you want to really kickstart your 3d modeling
journey with blender go and check out maker tales academy and the real question i have here is
precision modelling and blender sort of dying now that we have the new kid on the block cad sketcher
so first and foremost if you don't know what cad sketcher is that is basically cad like modeling
within blender it is definitely not cad it just brings cat-like functionalities and features
to blender so things like geometric constraints and dimensioning when you do precision modeling
in blender it's all in your head and you have to keep track of everything now i haven't put these
two workflows head to head because i sort of know the answer is very much dependent on what your
needs are but i really want to see i'm going to give a very simple technical drawing i'm going to
go my full speed on both of them and then let's talk about it and here we are inside a blender
with a precision ready file let's go and take on this technical drawing right here on both those
workflows i'm going to start with cad sketcher three two one and go so i'm going to delete the
cube bring up cad sketcher quickly let's go ctrl shift a go up here take a look from the top now
first i need to get an idea of the size of this so let's go and turn that into construction let's
add a dimension here from the drawing i can see this is going to be one three five as a reference
brilliant let's go you you now i'm not going to be centering you note take a look at that sketch the
sketch is from here to there let's do a distance here let's make sure that that is a vertical
distance and i want to set that to 60 and then i want this point and that point to actually be
vertically constrained then from there we're going to put in some arcs so let's go for an arc right
here let's go for an arc oops let's go for an arc over here as well and then let's build some lines
in there's are going to be a line here there's going to be a line here and now there's going to
be some over constraining going on soon so i'm going to delete these because we're about to do
tangent constraints and that will completely over constrain this so u and u the tangent
u and u tangent u and u tangent u and u tangent and the reason why we don't need those verticals
is because these two are equal to one another we have one degree of freedom which is the radius of
this right this minute so we're going to set that to 30 and then let's add those holes in as well
so that is c for circle bring that in and bring that in click both of these because these are
going to be equal to one another and let's also do a diameter for this one it is yep so that is uh
there it is that's the shortcut that i wanted him it was in my head just didn't know how to
get it out and we have that there perfect so that's now done let's go turn that to a mesh
leave here unfortunately we do not have sketch to sketch referencing so we're going to have to do
a little bit of prep work here take a look at from this side we're going to add one line in and then
another line in as well and i did a double click there so need to be careful with that
so i'm going to make this one a construction line make this one here a construction line
let's add a distance to this one this here is going to be 60 because that's going to let me know
where the center of that one is and then this one here let's add a distance that one's going to be
30 because i need to know where the end of that one is i also need to know where the end of this
one is here so let's might as well do another line in that direction let's turn this into a
construction line let's do a distance here and i'm just taking a look at the technical drawing that
should add up to 105. so now that we have that in place there let's carry on doing the rest of this
i could mirror this but i think it's going to be a little bit better to go and just draw it
all out so i'm going to draw this out like so oops there to there down up here up that way cross this
way cross that way over to there so now we need to just say hey you two you're going to be equal
you are going to be equal to this one here you are going to be vertically constrained to that
point there you two are going to be vertically constrained and you two are going to be equal
to one another you are going to have a dimension of 25 and you are actually pretty much the same
as that but just because the technical drawing says this let's do it this way instead so i'm
going to go here that is 75 there let's add a point now right oops let's go point please
to that line let's make u and u let's go for a midpoint constraint there you two need to be
vertically constrained to one another and you need to be vertically constrained i'm pretty
sure to this point here because that's going to be there there right so what is left oh it's the
distance of this line here so the distance of this line here that should be 65 and that
here oh we do have the problem that this one and that one there you need to be vertically aligned
and that is it completely done i'm pretty sure yep that's looking good so let's turn that into a
mesh leave the sketch and now we have exactly what we're wanting here so let's select this let's go
and add our solidify whack that to zero go up to 100 and that's it for now let's just quickly press
h to hide that do the same for this one here so we're gonna go solidify u 100 u 0
brilliant bring back everything with alt h then we'll select u and you do a lovely
little bool action like that remember that's under the add-on and there we have it now
that there is the cad scheduler workflow yes i know i went incredibly fast i know card sketcher
pretty deeply i've done a lot of debugging for this so there's pros and cons that we've got so
far if i wanted to do a chamfer for instance this edge here i can't that is just not really possible
i could do a chamfer for everything or a bevel for everything if i wanted to do a chamfer so
for this edge here i could technically do that all i have to do is go into the sketch then we can go
for instance let's add a line right here something like that let's do a trim tool um so let's that is
the y and we can just trim that up right there now of course that screwed up this whole thing
we need to do all the drawing correctly again so we could actually go back so this should actually
probably be a construction line now this one should be a construction line go in we'll make
a line from here to there now we've got problems with coincidences so you can see that it can
get a little bit over the top now we could let me just do it quickly i'm just going to go like that
i'm not going to bother to fully constrain this go like this we leave the sketch and now we have that
in place however if i wanted to actually chamfer this edge now i'm going to have to basically turn
this into a mesh remove the lovely power that is cad sketcher which is being able to go in here
and change all this up but it's sort of something that we've just got to keep in mind we want the
power of card sketcher so that's how it's got to be done so this is that now remember this is very
much still work and development so go and check out cloud sketch and find out more about it but
now let's put this head to head with the precision workflow so here we go the precision workflow
three to one let's go so deleting the cube let's bring in now a circle this circle is going to be
that is going to be 64 vertices and i want the radius of this to be 30 let's do that yet again
so let's do that in bring a circle this time it's going to be 15 though brilliant so now i have
that there let's grab that press shift d on the y bring that out that way by 60 we'll select these
two here that's g y minus 75 this time all of that is now in place so let's select all of that
group that together go into edit mode go to the top down and now we've got to be quite accurate
on our selection we want to select all of that right there go over here this one here all the way
around to that there make sure that that is across like that that is a cross like that yep now we're
going to delete those vertices select these two vertices right there press f join them up select
those two press f join them up select everything alt f x then we're going to put in limited
dissolve there we have that base shape there let's bring ourselves in a cube now to do the other
cut this one here is going to be 75 because that's what our technical drawing says taking that into
edit mode pressing three setting up our snapping and we'll select this face y snap it over to the
furthest point over there that wasn't the furthest point jonathan g y snap it to the furthest point
please thank you and then we're gonna go over to this side here go g y snap that to the furthest
point over there brilliant now let's add some loop cuts one loop cut this way two loop cuts this
way and i'm pretty sure yeah this is 75 that's 25 that's exactly how it should be let's press three
let's do a manifold extrusion this way by minus 65 because that's what our technical drawing says
then let's press to select this edge loop here and i'm going to use a little bit of cad
transforms now to do a scale dimensioning here so let's press s to scale go to the point that
i'm wanting uh the point that i'm wanting is right there is that correct no the point that
i want is right there on the zed that is right let's go on the x sorry x no sorry y there we go
there it is and i want this to go come on which way are we going now this way here that is not
quite what i've been envisioning scale here come on from you we're going to go on the z upwards
this way on the y please we're going to select u on the x that's better and now we're going to
be setting u to be 60 brilliant hit enter that is that in place press 3 let's go with our manifold
extrusion snap that to that point here u let's go manifold extrusion snap that to that point there
there we have it let's select this one let's do our solidify let's set that to 100
put that to zero then we can do the exact same thing there there bang and there we have it
now we have the same issue here really because if we wanted to do our lovely chamfers away on all
of this we've got to keep it in mind in our own head we have to go into edit mode we can select
this edge here we can now do a bevel and do that of course we could set this up as a vertex group
though and control it via a lovely modifier which is quite powerful but i can also now
basically turn this into mesh it's as simple as that because this is now precision modeling
i can just apply this i realize that this is precision modeling so i can go
in here and grab all that and start playing around with it now of course as you can see
this isn't exactly what we're expecting and that is basically blender precision modeling it's
gonna have problems when it comes to any type of bevels it's just the nature of the beast so
with that very scientific testing we can see that cat sketches two minutes slower than just blender
precision modeling now i'll be honest i truly believe that blender precision modeling is pretty
much doing a fundamental change to incorporate cad sketcher and cad sketchers workflow is basically
blender precision modeling just with a little added twist that you can add constraints and
dimensions to everything it's really a working pair that creates the best workflow together now
card sketcher still has quite a way to go and there's definitely problems going there
but it's an incredible project that i really suggest that you go and check them out i've
got some more videos covering it down below but when it comes to precision modeling and blender
it is going to always have that little problem of bevels and chamfers just sort of needing
the correct topology now this could of course change in the future who knows what blender has
i know that from now on i'm never going to assume what blender has because i never thought that
you would get cad like modeling like cad sketcher in blender and here it is now so
i'm definitely going to go and start to think about how i can refresh my current free courses
to include cat sketcher i think it might still a little bit too early but let me know do you think
i should add card sketcher into some free courses of blender precision modeling or should i wait
till it's stable at that 1.0 release anyway thank you for watching a huge thank you to my patrons
you guys are absolutely awesome and without you i truly could not make maker tales it means the
world to me a big thank you to my vip makers jem oscarnak and david fernandez and if you're
enjoying what i'm making here i would love it if you'd consider supporting me if you think
i am worthy of your support thank you for watching keep making i'll let the quest continue