To speed up the filling at 6:00 , you can use Alt+F to do edge loop fill. After that to clean up the tris, you can do Limited Dissolve from "Delete" menu by pressing X
Good Shout Anssi, Only don't side to this method is your not lose control of where you have your edges and this can matter laser on when doing bevels but absolutely this is something I think i'll mention when I come to updated the course to 2.9
When selecting Verts for faces, try using 'C' and then scrolling to adjust the size of the selection ring. When done selecting, right click to turn off the ring. I think this method is a ton faster than box selecting.
To those detractors that complain that PDT may not be the most efficient tool or this video may not show you the ultimate best way of doing things. I say, it may not be THE way but it is ONE way, it's the exposure to new techniques which is valuable. Given that, I am always appreciative of the unpaid time, organisation and effort put in to making a single video like this let alone a whole series.
Hey Jonathan.. I have a Tipp for making holes in surfaces. Acutally, I was quite annoyed at how cumbersome blender is with holes in surfaces so I played around and here is the tipp: Maybe you or your viewers would enjoy this. I think it's simpler (at least when you have many holes). --- 1. [Edit Mode]: The circles you have (where you want the holes in the surface): Make them separate objects. (because we want to do a object subtraction, they need to be their own object. You can do that by right-clicking and choosing Separate while in Edit mode (and with them selected) 2. [Edit Mode]: FILL them (create a face, as you have done) and then EXTRUDE them into the z-direction, so they become CYLINDERS. Height doesn't matter, neither positive or negative z-Direction. Move the cylinders slightly through the surface (if only the faces touch, it will not work perfectly). Make it look like you want to punch the cylinders through the surface. 3. [Object Mode]: Select the surface that you want the holes cut into. Goto Modifiers on the right and choose "Boolean". Choose the cylinder (which now is its own object). Make sure that Difference is selected. Hit apply. 4. (this is important): MOVE the cylinder away. 5. Admire hole in surface. ---- It seems to me that Blender can only do Object boolean interactions, if at least one element is a full body. I couldn't get this to work if both objects are only faces. Seems to be a bug or oversight. I believe this might be faster than the whole weird/cumbersome clicking of vertices and trying to make the right surfaces.. Tested on Blender 2.83
Hi Fuzzifikation, I love that your expatriating and progressing forward. Absolutely this is a very valid way of create holes in objects and surfaces. From my understanding currently exact surface to surface bool operations cannot be done or a very buggy. This some times happens with 3d object that have exact intersecting faces. Thanks for sharing. I'll be covering all this and a lot more soon. I just want to teach it form the VERY basics of pure face to face control i.e. on a 2D plain first before we start to play around within the 3D space. Come 2 weeks times things will start to get exponentially more complicated and knowing there VERY basics of how blender works on a 2D plain will make the transition to 3D and dealing with the hurdles that come with 3 dimensions a lot easier to tackle and understand. p.s. Yes clicking vertices SUCKS but you'll be surprised how much more your'll have to do it to get 3D objects to play nicely once things get complicated. p.p.s. I also plan on doing a whole post series after the basics are covered of how to put all that has been learnt into real worlds examples.
@@labscience8271 you can skip the extrusion part and the moving in between the part. the surface will split anyway, and then if you have any jagged edges, just follow the suggestion @Warcans had around limited dissolve, which will join broken surfaces, for you to then delete with x -> remove faces
This was such an informative video! Is there a whole playlist I can watch to learn how to use blender to create precision models intended for 3D printing?
I really don't want to dis this video, or PDT, which can sometimes be very useful. But there's a reason Blender has a reputation as a fast modelling tool, even for some aspects of precision work. Here are some more Blenderish, and quicker alternative moves to the ones shown here: (Set your Snap to 'Vertex', and 'Active'.) In all the Fillet and Chamfer examples, Ctrl-Shift-B (Bevel) produces identical results, with numerical entry. It is *not* less accurate than PDT, but *is* less flexible, for arcs through other angles. 4:04 .. Shift-S, Cursor to Selected will put the cursor exactly between the selected vertices. (PDT would be useful if it wasn't at 50%) 9:27.. Shift-S, Cursor to Selected will bang the cursor straight on to that vertex. 10:40 Create the new circle at the cursor, and then G > move the *circle*, entering the X and Y numerically. A bit easier than moving the cursor. 12:20 for the center of the arc, Shift-D, duplicate a vertex to one end of it, GX or GY, snap the duplicate to the vertex at the other end in X or Y, Shift-S, cursor to selected. (Delete the duplicate vertex). PDT would be useful if the arc was not through 90 degrees. 13:37 Shift-D duplicate the central hole, and move the duplicate. GX, enter the 7.5 numerically. 14:32, To fill the face-with-holes, In a clean set of outlines, without leftover connecting edges, Alt-F. Followed by X > Limited Dissolve to get rid of excess edges. (You may want to get a prettier arrangement of internal edges by J creating new ones between selected vertices, and Ctrl-X dissolving the edges you don't want.) (Ctrl-Left-Click, the selection of all vertices along the shortest path from the last selection, is useful if you're filling perimeters by hand) I really like what Maker Tales is doing, proposing Blender as a reasonable precision modeller ( although, strictly, it is a visualisation and animation suite.). This is a nice, carefully made presentation. And Lord knows, he's much more skillful than me in most of the areas he covers. But I don't want viewers to go away thinking 'Oh my God, this is such a grind'. You can do the work in fewer, simpler, steps.
I was thinking something very similar here. PDT sounds like a great tool, but many of those options are very quickly done via the keyboard, just have to learn them, and for many, that's the hard part.
Hello Robin, You make a valid point... A video covering this many shortcuts and 3D modelling specific terms would once again lose the audience that I'm doing my best to help learn blender. It comes again to the idea that this is a beginners course using a spiral learning path to teach. Considering you know blender so deeply I'm sure you are aware that many operations and ways to get the same result. I guess a weird metaphor to explain my thinking would be if I was teaching someone who had never driven a car before would I take them nice and slowly in a little fiat micra down a country road to grasp the basics or would I stick them right into a Ferrari F12 in the middle of a Nascar race. Your point is valid, many might like the fast peddle to the metal style of learning and if they crash, well screw it they can get back up and keep going. However, I'm going the slow and steady route as I know from experience while grasping other 3D Softwares can be very daunting and even a small bump that sometimes really throw someone off ever wanting to learn a 3D program. On a personal note, yes blender is very heavily focused on visualisations and animation. The beauty of blender is that it's open and makers are all about open source. Thus they can transform an application that was intended for one topic into completely another topic. If others don't want to use blender as "Blender Foundation" see's fit ie. not using their workflows and a more organic-based modelling methodology. Well, I'm sorry to say but that's not how the cookie is going to crumble. I've been lucky enough to have been in the position to learn both Organic and "Precision" modelling. My 3D modelling program timelines goes a little like this: Maya, Zbrush, Mudbox, tinkercad, mesh mixer, rhino, fusion 360 and now I'm taking on blender. By all means, there are great similarities but having worked professionally in both worlds they both have completely different mindsets. I say this because of the idea that something is a "grid" comes with the domain of precision modelling. Many makers understand that to do something right you need to be consistent, methodical and well quite frankly slow. Yes, blender can be incredibly fast, hell just take a look at CG matters, CG Geek or Imphenzia. The world that I'm looking to help and teach to are those that are interested in 0.01mm margin of error. This is why speed is not really the goal here. Speed will come with time but precision comes with patients and understanding of the principles. So just to confirm, I'm not saying you can't be fast and precise. I saying that being fast, precise and new to any program is near to impossible. Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling on here. Thanks for your input robin.
@@Keep-Making Thanks for your very reasonable reply. I really don't want to hurt your video, or your process, and I get where you're coming from. In my defence, it's not the *shortcuts* I'm driving at. All the examples I gave could have been executed through the GUI.. IMO, they're not 'quick tricks'; they're basic Blender building blocks. For example, pretty much the whole reason for the existence of the 3D cursor (flawed as it still is) is to snap to the median point of selections, and, in turn, have selections snap to it. Shift-S would strike me as very basic to precision. To stretch your driving analogy, even if I was in a Micra, I'd still want to be taught threading the wheel, changing gear with only the palm of my hand, feathering brakes, etc.(even if those ways seemed awkward or slow while I was learning them), so when I found myself in a truck, I wouldn't have habits to unlearn. One of the beauties of Blender, for me, is, instead of making me hunt through a forest of UI for a semi-automated tool which will try to do jobs for me and screw them up in ways I have to get round, it hands me much simpler tools which I can learn through repetition, and leaves it to me to compose operations for myself. I found this particlar aspect a huge relief after Maya and Max. XSI was also beautiful in this way, before Autodesk clobbered it. But I'm sure you're right, yours is probably a better way in for, say, CAD users. I hope my examples can stand as a temporary playground for people to get an inkling of how they might eventually use this tool, and not as a harsh criticism of your obviously thoughtful, and well-engineered presentation. BTW, you can squeeze 1 more decimal point out of the display of edge-lengths, angles, etc, by setting Scene > Units to 'None'. That's something that could definitely be improved.
Hey Robin, No problem and I understand where your coming from. I guess the long and the short is I can't really cater for everyone but for the widest audience I think may be of interest. For me these are people that are use to a mode CAD style interface and workflow and those who may have never touched a 3D program before. On a side note when it comes to blender it has a great UI in terms of ease but for none sub-mm precise modeling that I could only dream of when I was working in VFX but in terms of CAD it has some huge nightmarish lacking ease of use features that many rhino and fusion 360 users cringe to see that it's not a 1 button click. Anyway not really much more to say here. Everyone has there own journeys to take while learning 3D software and I'm sure I'm just a small pit stop for some and a cornerstone for others. 😀
@@Keep-Making It might be a good idea to pin comments like these so they can be used as additional material once you have completed a tutorial and want to know if there is a way to automate or quicken these processes. I think your approach makes perfect sense for a tutorial for beginners but anybody who wants to get good at this kind of thing will also appreciate the presence of these keyboard shortcuts. I come from the text editor centric world of software development and one of the things that attracted me to Blender (alongisde the obvious FOSS nature of it and it's power) is the amount of keyboard shortcuts that it apparently has.
Hi Mark, Unfortunately, the 2.9 update has broken a few things in PDT. Don't worry tho. The dev is working on it and I'm currently updating this whole series for blender 2.9. It should all be out in the next few weeks
@@Keep-Making You can download the 1.4.2 release of PDT from github, and install that version to fix this. github.com/Clockmender/Precision-Drawing-Tools/releases
Great Video tutorial! Thank you for that! seems like in blender 3.0 some things are not exactly as you show, but little easier. just one small note from me... if using control-left mouse (loop select) selecting this vertices or edges is more fast and easy. but without you great tutorial i wouldent be able to do so. Thanks again. (if you would make a video serie for udemy...i would buy it!)
it'd be a blessing if you could script it as well, and export the whole thing in some useful form, maybe even web-based one. What i'm thinking is, you got a CAD shape, and end-user can set certain sizes in such shape to see "end product". The rest of the things will align accordingly in realtime.
Enjoying your videos on treating Blender with the sensibility of CAD software. A tip on filling in all those faces without telling blender how to manage those holes. Alt-f should fill and triangulate or rather connect all the vertices for you. Or at least I think so 🤞
@@Keep-Making The reason, I think, is that if you want a proper manifold, you need to have the same number of vertices along the outside shape as you do around the circle so that blender can map each vertex from the circle to a point along the outside edge. This is only true for shape with "holes" in it. by splitting the shape into two faces, then each face is simply a shape with n-vertices and is a proper manifold.
Hi Jonathan , Thanks for the work you're doing. I had worked with Blender about 12 to 15 yrs ago, but could really only do graphics for cartoons, movies or games. I'm more interested in drafting precision design, like Autocad, I just cant afford auto cad. plus the animation will help in creating things with moving parts, I would think. Glad too see Blender come so far. I'm enjoying your series and hope you keep it up, You're a good teacher.. Just out of curiosity, where are you from, I can't quite identify your accent and slang.
I was having a problem with linux mint: I couldn't Alt Click to select the other loop because mint (and Ubuntu as far as I know) have an option to move the actual program window with ALT + left mouse button click. In Mint this option is under de Preferences > Window Management > Behavior I disable it and ALT+Click work fine. Hope it could help others.
@@Keep-Making Same thing is for the Alt+Rightdrag (don't remeber where it was needed in Blender). I changed it to use the Super-Key in Mint, and stick with the Alt-bindings in Blender.
I found an easier way to make holes: just add cylinders! Steps: * Fill the entire surface * Add cylinders wherever you need to place those cuts * in object mode, click on the surface and then add boolean modifier as 'difference' * set as target each cylinder and apply effect(this is your cutting tool) * finally select all cylinders to delete and you will be left with holes Hopefully you find this useful.
I dunno if anyones gonna see this but i am having major issues with the current pos. delta moves. Granted I am using this in Imperial, but i am trying to move 0.750" and it keeps throwing my 3D cursor WAY farther than 0.750". any tips would be appreciated
Wow! So you're saying I don't need any CAD software to model a box for my paints or a cell phone case and 3d-print it? Will the size be exactly the same?
Right at 8:00, I tabbed out of edit mode and nothing was showing. What happened is my normal's were facing downward. If that happens, the back side of the face becomes transparent. I've seen this (and use it) many times. If you do a Shift-N to clean up normal's, and check off the Inside checkbox in the lower left, it will flip all your normal's, and your model will be visible again. I noticed that you think the same as I do/did that booleans are bad. Not so, but N-Gons are way bad, especially if you're sending them to a game engine or (maybe) a 3d printer? There has to be a better way to tell Blender about the holes.
My 3D cursor is snapping to none of the points it is supposed to with the PDT Tool. Seems to offset to some different spot. Both the Intersection Tool and the 3point Centre of Arc Tool.
Hi Jonathan, I’m working in imperial units set to inches. When I use PDT to move the cursor to a given location in the way you describe, let’s say, and inch on the x. The curser moves only a fraction. What am I missing? Great series btw. My go to channel for this way of working in blender.
Hi MindCreative Studioes, If you are on blender version 2.9 I'm very sorry to say that it looks like PDT is having quiet some difficulty as the update has really screwed things up. If you could kindly post these "bugs" to the dev he would be very appreciative blenderartists.org/t/precision-drawing-tools-pdt-add-on-for-2-8x/1196313/56 I would also just like to let you know that in about just over a month i'll be updating the whole course to blender 2.9 Thanks for your patience
@@Keep-Making I have submitted a bug report and it has been found by the creator of PDT that some of the Blender API has changed. An update will happen at some point. Looking forward to finishing this tutorial.
@@mindcreativestudios4709 Great to hear. Sorry, you're going to have to wait a bit. Maybe downgrade to blender 2.83 for now and finish the rest of the course. I'll be sure to put up a video that will let those that have already done the course know the changes in blender 2.9 precision modeling workflows.
hey mate just ctrl + shift + B and type in your desired distance eg. 10 for 10 mm. Then in the bottom left you can click on the bevel icon and change the segments etc. I was having the same problem with the PDT tool so i just did this instead
Hey Ben, If you mean will I be showing how to export vector lines out of blender then the answer to this is yes in the next video I'll be introducing a new plugin that I've had developed to make this possible. I hope that helps.
Start form the begging of this course here and i'm sure it will make sence with time... It's to do with your unit scale not set to 0.001 ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsXzUbBNz7-IvV7UJYHZzCdF
Hey Jonathan, Good point, to be honest this was the break up the learning curve. You can't do a Bool cut form 2 plainar surfaces. One would need to be a 3d shape. As we have not entered the 3d space just yet in the series I kept it to manual hole generation for now. Plus this will help in the future if you need to fix weird and broken geometry int he future.
I tried FreeCAD a year ago or so 0but is was sooo terrible to use, and my model never turned out as I wanted even if I exactly (yes, 100% exactly) followed the tutorial then it turned out there was a bug in this and that version, the default properties were different, they changed some som MINOR thing and so on. Plus the GUI is not very intuitive (I think)... I tried Fusion 360 with personal/hobby license, that was much better but I am stuck with blender I think, it looks CAD is not for me. But for some job CAD is definately better. Give fusion 360 a try too if you have problems with FreeCAD AND you don't mind using an Autodesk product.
@@cstrx11 Yeah I found it very difficult for the first day, but after that pretty straight forward. There was no instant gratification. I only use it to designed machined parts, it's the wrong tool for complex objects, like models of people, etc.
When creating edges, is there any difference in using te "join 2 verts" in PDT of pressing F when you have the two vertices selected? To me it seems that same, but maybe there is some difference under the hood i'm missing?
im working on a simple design of my own right now. but for some reason when i try to make fillets on one particular corner it generates way more vertices than specified and it looks like its expanding into a 3d space rather than flat like the other fillets on the same design. any ideas?
Hey Bash, This sounds like you have overlapping vertices. I would also suggest using the updated course ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsXzUbBNz7-IvV7UJYHZzCdF
@@Keep-Making yea I switched over to the new vid. Overlapping vertices was my first thought so I xrayd selected the vertices and merged by distance. Said none were removed. I also selected all and repeated that with none removed. Once I turn the design into 3d it looks like it’s creating fillet and then a single anchor point outside the curve. I resorted to doing it that way and the. Deleting the “anchor” vert. Not sure what the heck is going on.
Hello! I am running into an issue where when I try to Join 2 Verts. Blender is telling me that I only have one selected when it shows I have selected two on the screen. Is it because these are duplicated circles I am trying to link?
Hi Boisson, Hmmmm I really don't quite know what would give you these results. The only think I can thing is that there are separate objects. In other words something have been creating in object mode and then you brought them both into edit mode. Trying doing into object mode again, select everything and click ctrl+J to join everything into one object and then go into edit more and see if that works?
@@Keep-Making I learned that I had to join them. My brother is pretty good at Blender and saw my issue right away. Thank you tons for getting back to me!
Hey Jonathan, I try to figure out why my fillet option within blender pdt wont work. I ve set top view in pdt and eg tried 3mm and XY segments. Any idea? Really grateful new user her :-)
Hi Rapheal, unfortunately blender 2.9 has made a mess of PDT. But don't worry in the next few weeks i'm updating the whole course to blender 2.9 and there will no longer be a problem. I also know the dev is trying very hard to get this fixed asap
Man, you need to boost your modeling skills, some operations could be made much faster! Making holes - knife project tool, you making Ngon and cut shape of cycles, delete faces in centers, thats all. Also making fillets is destructive way, better to use bevel modifire in the end so you can tweak filets or shape of fillets.
I was thinking the same thing.. Not trying to disrepect the video, I do think it was informative and I want to continue learning about PDT. But I honestly think all of this video could be done in Vanilla blender faster and more efficiently. Most of the things done with the 3D cursor positioning, such as placing between median points or offsetting by exact amounts. The Shift-S menu has a few operations for manipulating the cursor, as well as the N panel where you can enter arithmetic expressions for the transform components of the 3D cursor. I can understand maybe trying to appeal to a traditional CAD user, but those ways of interacting with Blender are just the basics and should not be discarded all together. It's also somewhat of an unknown feature, and I actually wouldn't really reccommend this route, but it's interetsing to think about. The curve object has functionality for 2D directly. You can take a curve object, select 2D and `fill both`, and then compose other curves inside of the same curve object. Those nested curves will be treated as 'boolean differences' directly. If PDT could interact with curve control points then that would be a much cleaner way of dealing with holes on 2D surfaces. This IMO would be better than some messiness with using 3D manifold cylinders to boolean onto the 2D non-manifold surface. It might work, especially with the Exact option given in 2.9, but it still feels kinda wrong lol. There's also the benefit that curves have variable resolution instead of verticies. The workflow given by PDT as it stands seems to not favor modifers/nondestructiveness at the 2D sketch level. It would be so cool to have it create fillets out of bezier handles and things like that.
the creator of the n-gons and the creator of the booleans spoke about the need to create holes in blenders ... and probably the creator of the boolans will implement this function. check out this thread devtalk.blender.org/t/holes-for-mesh-surfaces/
Hi Noki, Wow that was a hell of a read but very interesting. Thanks for the shout out there a the end. Ya I've been talking with clockmender for quite a while now. He is the author of PDT. Would be amazing if they could make what there speaking off as that would be a great fusion of solid / organic workflows. Here's hoping it comes soon to play about with.
I had trouble adding the faces. No matter how well I selected the vertices, and no matter which order I selected the vertices, Blender would bug out and create faces that extend inside the holes by connecting various vertices that don't have an edge on them. I ended up having to add a bunch of edges to make smaller faces to avoid the error. This is what my final product looks like with my tons-and-tons-of-extra-edges workaround: imgur.com/a/UslCXpP Does anyone know what might be happening?
Hey David, I'm sorry to hear you're having some weird results. I have a feeling you might have overlapping vertices but I'm not 100% sure. Would you mind saving your file and sending it to Hello@makertales.com and I'll see what I can do to help out =)
@@Keep-Making Thanks for the help; the problem was, in fact, overlapping vertices. It's working now. Although, now I have a minor problem where the faces are transparent from a Top-Orthographic perspective (to the point where it looks like there are no faces), but the faces are visible from the Bottom Orthographic perspective. The light source is actually above the side that looks transparent, surprisingly. Do you have any idea what could cause that? Edit: nevermind, I fixed that second problem by adjusting the Viewport Shading. It's amazing, I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of Blender.
Hi Rajendra, Please take a look at the earlier course videos to understand what PDT is. ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsX3qdwhEyd77zy82bM-I8t1 I do hope that helps.
Hi Azizul, Yup unfortunately the update has broken PDT a little bit. But don't worry I'm currently working on updating the whole series in the next week or two for blender 1.9.
This isn't productive at all, it's almost like making a rocket to make a precision hole, this video is 4 years old, is there a faster way to do this, I'm still struggling a lot with Blender to do things with precision. I'm a beginner in blender, I try to do everything in 2D, export with DXF and start from 2D to create 3D, I do 2D very quickly with Corel... I would have a way thinking in the way I mentioned 2D (dxf) to 3D blender with precision. I'm making a piece that mixes precision with semi-organic design
What!! The 3d cursor actually has a function??
ngl these videos are blowing my mind, thank you so much
Great to hear Noah!
You might also find the new course a little more useful ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsXzUbBNz7-IvV7UJYHZzCdF
@@Keep-Making My thoughts exactly. Amazing. I feel like I never knew Blender at all.
This is insane how many details you have covered in this and other videos in the series. Thank You !!!
To speed up the filling at 6:00 , you can use Alt+F to do edge loop fill. After that to clean up the tris, you can do Limited Dissolve from "Delete" menu by pressing X
Good Shout Anssi,
Only don't side to this method is your not lose control of where you have your edges and this can matter laser on when doing bevels but absolutely this is something I think i'll mention when I come to updated the course to 2.9
nice trick!
Thanks man! If not that little trick that pain would be deal breaker for me!
When selecting Verts for faces, try using 'C' and then scrolling to adjust the size of the selection ring. When done selecting, right click to turn off the ring. I think this method is a ton faster than box selecting.
To those detractors that complain that PDT may not be the most efficient tool or this video may not show you the ultimate best way of doing things. I say, it may not be THE way but it is ONE way, it's the exposure to new techniques which is valuable. Given that, I am always appreciative of the unpaid time, organisation and effort put in to making a single video like this let alone a whole series.
Be sure to check out the blender 2.91 series saiello, as that one has hours of refinement for cad users. And thank for your kind words.
@@Keep-Making I'm already working my way through part 8... 😁👍
@@saiello2061 just saw you commenting on the 2.83 one and got worried 😂
@@Keep-Making 👍😊
Hey Jonathan.. I have a Tipp for making holes in surfaces. Acutally, I was quite annoyed at how cumbersome blender is with holes in surfaces so I played around and here is the tipp:
Maybe you or your viewers would enjoy this. I think it's simpler (at least when you have many holes).
---
1. [Edit Mode]: The circles you have (where you want the holes in the surface): Make them separate objects. (because we want to do a object subtraction, they need to be their own object.
You can do that by right-clicking and choosing Separate while in Edit mode (and with them selected)
2. [Edit Mode]: FILL them (create a face, as you have done) and then EXTRUDE them into the z-direction, so they become CYLINDERS. Height doesn't matter, neither positive or negative z-Direction.
Move the cylinders slightly through the surface (if only the faces touch, it will not work perfectly). Make it look like you want to punch the cylinders through the surface.
3. [Object Mode]: Select the surface that you want the holes cut into. Goto Modifiers on the right and choose "Boolean". Choose the cylinder (which now is its own object). Make sure that Difference is selected. Hit apply.
4. (this is important): MOVE the cylinder away.
5. Admire hole in surface.
----
It seems to me that Blender can only do Object boolean interactions, if at least one element is a full body. I couldn't get this to work if both objects are only faces. Seems to be a bug or oversight.
I believe this might be faster than the whole weird/cumbersome clicking of vertices and trying to make the right surfaces..
Tested on Blender 2.83
Hi Fuzzifikation, I love that your expatriating and progressing forward.
Absolutely this is a very valid way of create holes in objects and surfaces. From my understanding currently exact surface to surface bool operations cannot be done or a very buggy. This some times happens with 3d object that have exact intersecting faces.
Thanks for sharing. I'll be covering all this and a lot more soon. I just want to teach it form the VERY basics of pure face to face control i.e. on a 2D plain first before we start to play around within the 3D space. Come 2 weeks times things will start to get exponentially more complicated and knowing there VERY basics of how blender works on a 2D plain will make the transition to 3D and dealing with the hurdles that come with 3 dimensions a lot easier to tackle and understand.
p.s. Yes clicking vertices SUCKS but you'll be surprised how much more your'll have to do it to get 3D objects to play nicely once things get complicated.
p.p.s. I also plan on doing a whole post series after the basics are covered of how to put all that has been learnt into real worlds examples.
@@Keep-Making Thanks for being so nice.
That's what I wanted to say. Thank you!
In this way, you can cut all types of holes, like triangle, oval and all other shapes.
@@labscience8271 you can skip the extrusion part and the moving in between the part. the surface will split anyway, and then if you have any jagged edges, just follow the suggestion @Warcans had around limited dissolve, which will join broken surfaces, for you to then delete with x -> remove faces
I'm working on a research in the university that I study right now and this playlist are helping me so much, thank you!
This was such an informative video! Is there a whole playlist I can watch to learn how to use blender to create precision models intended for 3D printing?
I really don't want to dis this video, or PDT, which can sometimes be very useful.
But there's a reason Blender has a reputation as a fast modelling tool, even for some aspects of precision work.
Here are some more Blenderish, and quicker alternative moves to the ones shown here: (Set your Snap to 'Vertex', and 'Active'.)
In all the Fillet and Chamfer examples, Ctrl-Shift-B (Bevel) produces identical results, with numerical entry. It is *not* less accurate than PDT, but *is* less flexible, for arcs through other angles.
4:04 .. Shift-S, Cursor to Selected will put the cursor exactly between the selected vertices. (PDT would be useful if it wasn't at 50%)
9:27.. Shift-S, Cursor to Selected will bang the cursor straight on to that vertex.
10:40 Create the new circle at the cursor, and then G > move the *circle*, entering the X and Y numerically. A bit easier than moving the cursor.
12:20 for the center of the arc, Shift-D, duplicate a vertex to one end of it, GX or GY, snap the duplicate to the vertex at the other end in X or Y, Shift-S, cursor to selected. (Delete the duplicate vertex). PDT would be useful if the arc was not through 90 degrees.
13:37 Shift-D duplicate the central hole, and move the duplicate. GX, enter the 7.5 numerically.
14:32, To fill the face-with-holes, In a clean set of outlines, without leftover connecting edges, Alt-F. Followed by X > Limited Dissolve to get rid of excess edges. (You may want to get a prettier arrangement of internal edges by J creating new ones between selected vertices, and Ctrl-X dissolving the edges you don't want.)
(Ctrl-Left-Click, the selection of all vertices along the shortest path from the last selection, is useful if you're filling perimeters by hand)
I really like what Maker Tales is doing, proposing Blender as a reasonable precision modeller ( although, strictly, it is a visualisation and animation suite.). This is a nice, carefully made presentation. And Lord knows, he's much more skillful than me in most of the areas he covers. But I don't want viewers to go away thinking 'Oh my God, this is such a grind'. You can do the work in fewer, simpler, steps.
I was thinking something very similar here. PDT sounds like a great tool, but many of those options are very quickly done via the keyboard, just have to learn them, and for many, that's the hard part.
Hello Robin,
You make a valid point...
A video covering this many shortcuts and 3D modelling specific terms would once again lose the audience that I'm doing my best to help learn blender. It comes again to the idea that this is a beginners course using a spiral learning path to teach. Considering you know blender so deeply I'm sure you are aware that many operations and ways to get the same result. I guess a weird metaphor to explain my thinking would be if I was teaching someone who had never driven a car before would I take them nice and slowly in a little fiat micra down a country road to grasp the basics or would I stick them right into a Ferrari F12 in the middle of a Nascar race. Your point is valid, many might like the fast peddle to the metal style of learning and if they crash, well screw it they can get back up and keep going. However, I'm going the slow and steady route as I know from experience while grasping other 3D Softwares can be very daunting and even a small bump that sometimes really throw someone off ever wanting to learn a 3D program.
On a personal note, yes blender is very heavily focused on visualisations and animation. The beauty of blender is that it's open and makers are all about open source. Thus they can transform an application that was intended for one topic into completely another topic. If others don't want to use blender as "Blender Foundation" see's fit ie. not using their workflows and a more organic-based modelling methodology. Well, I'm sorry to say but that's not how the cookie is going to crumble. I've been lucky enough to have been in the position to learn both Organic and "Precision" modelling. My 3D modelling program timelines goes a little like this: Maya, Zbrush, Mudbox, tinkercad, mesh mixer, rhino, fusion 360 and now I'm taking on blender. By all means, there are great similarities but having worked professionally in both worlds they both have completely different mindsets. I say this because of the idea that something is a "grid" comes with the domain of precision modelling. Many makers understand that to do something right you need to be consistent, methodical and well quite frankly slow. Yes, blender can be incredibly fast, hell just take a look at CG matters, CG Geek
or Imphenzia. The world that I'm looking to help and teach to are those that are interested in 0.01mm margin of error. This is why speed is not really the goal here. Speed will come with time but precision comes with patients and understanding of the principles. So just to confirm, I'm not saying you can't be fast and precise. I saying that being fast, precise and new to any program is near to impossible. Anyway, I feel like I'm rambling on here. Thanks for your input robin.
@@Keep-Making Thanks for your very reasonable reply. I really don't want to hurt your video, or your process, and I get where you're coming from. In my defence, it's not the *shortcuts* I'm driving at. All the examples I gave could have been executed through the GUI.. IMO, they're not 'quick tricks'; they're basic Blender building blocks.
For example, pretty much the whole reason for the existence of the 3D cursor (flawed as it still is) is to snap to the median point of selections, and, in turn, have selections snap to it. Shift-S would strike me as very basic to precision.
To stretch your driving analogy, even if I was in a Micra, I'd still want to be taught threading the wheel, changing gear with only the palm of my hand, feathering brakes, etc.(even if those ways seemed awkward or slow while I was learning them), so when I found myself in a truck, I wouldn't have habits to unlearn. One of the beauties of Blender, for me, is, instead of making me hunt through a forest of UI for a semi-automated tool which will try to do jobs for me and screw them up in ways I have to get round, it hands me much simpler tools which I can learn through repetition, and leaves it to me to compose operations for myself. I found this particlar aspect a huge relief after Maya and Max. XSI was also beautiful in this way, before Autodesk clobbered it.
But I'm sure you're right, yours is probably a better way in for, say, CAD users. I hope my examples can stand as a temporary playground for people to get an inkling of how they might eventually use this tool, and not as a harsh criticism of your obviously thoughtful, and well-engineered presentation.
BTW, you can squeeze 1 more decimal point out of the display of edge-lengths, angles, etc, by setting Scene > Units to 'None'. That's something that could definitely be improved.
Hey Robin,
No problem and I understand where your coming from. I guess the long and the short is I can't really cater for everyone but for the widest audience I think may be of interest. For me these are people that are use to a mode CAD style interface and workflow and those who may have never touched a 3D program before.
On a side note when it comes to blender it has a great UI in terms of ease but for none sub-mm precise modeling that I could only dream of when I was working in VFX but in terms of CAD it has some huge nightmarish lacking ease of use features that many rhino and fusion 360 users cringe to see that it's not a 1 button click. Anyway not really much more to say here. Everyone has there own journeys to take while learning 3D software and I'm sure I'm just a small pit stop for some and a cornerstone for others. 😀
@@Keep-Making It might be a good idea to pin comments like these so they can be used as additional material once you have completed a tutorial and want to know if there is a way to automate or quicken these processes. I think your approach makes perfect sense for a tutorial for beginners but anybody who wants to get good at this kind of thing will also appreciate the presence of these keyboard shortcuts.
I come from the text editor centric world of software development and one of the things that attracted me to Blender (alongisde the obvious FOSS nature of it and it's power) is the amount of keyboard shortcuts that it apparently has.
The loop select will save me a lot of time.
Hey Heppy, be sure to check out the new course too : ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsXzUbBNz7-IvV7UJYHZzCdF
PDT Fillet does not work for me - followed your directions exactly - I have no idea why it does not create the additional vertices
The Fillet doesn't work for me either. Apparently it's a bug caused by a change in the API of the bevel tool that is used for the fillet operation.
Hi Mark,
Unfortunately, the 2.9 update has broken a few things in PDT. Don't worry tho. The dev is working on it and I'm currently updating this whole series for blender 2.9. It should all be out in the next few weeks
@@Keep-Making You can download the 1.4.2 release of PDT from github, and install that version to fix this. github.com/Clockmender/Precision-Drawing-Tools/releases
Great Video tutorial! Thank you for that!
seems like in blender 3.0 some things are not exactly as you show, but little easier.
just one small note from me... if using control-left mouse (loop select) selecting this vertices or edges is more fast and easy. but without you great tutorial i wouldent be able to do so.
Thanks again.
(if you would make a video serie for udemy...i would buy it!)
it'd be a blessing if you could script it as well, and export the whole thing in some useful form, maybe even web-based one. What i'm thinking is, you got a CAD shape, and end-user can set certain sizes in such shape to see "end product". The rest of the things will align accordingly in realtime.
Enjoying your videos on treating Blender with the sensibility of CAD software. A tip on filling in all those faces without telling blender how to manage those holes. Alt-f should fill and triangulate or rather connect all the vertices for you. Or at least I think so 🤞
really?
I found that when I did that at 5:11 all I would get is a mess
@@Keep-Making The reason, I think, is that if you want a proper manifold, you need to have the same number of vertices along the outside shape as you do around the circle so that blender can map each vertex from the circle to a point along the outside edge. This is only true for shape with "holes" in it. by splitting the shape into two faces, then each face is simply a shape with n-vertices and is a proper manifold.
I learned a lot, thanks very much.
Hi Mecdot,
I'm to happy your enjoying it and i'm glad it was useful for you.
thanks for the video. when i select circle , it makes me a circle of 1 meter radius???
Hi Jonathan , Thanks for the work you're doing. I had worked with Blender about 12 to 15 yrs ago, but could really only do graphics for cartoons, movies or games. I'm more interested in drafting precision design, like Autocad, I just cant afford auto cad. plus the animation will help in creating things with moving parts, I would think. Glad too see Blender come so far. I'm enjoying your series and hope you keep it up, You're a good teacher..
Just out of curiosity, where are you from, I can't quite identify your accent and slang.
Why am I getting lines and infill in random places when trying to fill around the holes?
Thank you Jonathan
I was having a problem with linux mint: I couldn't Alt Click to select the other loop because mint (and Ubuntu as far as I know) have an option to move the actual program window with ALT + left mouse button click.
In Mint this option is under de Preferences > Window Management > Behavior
I disable it and ALT+Click work fine.
Hope it could help others.
Thank you for the heads up Tom.
@@Keep-Making Same thing is for the Alt+Rightdrag (don't remeber where it was needed in Blender). I changed it to use the Super-Key in Mint, and stick with the Alt-bindings in Blender.
I found an easier way to make holes: just add cylinders!
Steps:
* Fill the entire surface
* Add cylinders wherever you need to place those cuts
* in object mode, click on the surface and then add boolean modifier as 'difference'
* set as target each cylinder and apply effect(this is your cutting tool)
* finally select all cylinders to delete and you will be left with holes
Hopefully you find this useful.
I dunno if anyones gonna see this but i am having major issues with the current pos. delta moves. Granted I am using this in Imperial, but i am trying to move 0.750" and it keeps throwing my 3D cursor WAY farther than 0.750". any tips would be appreciated
Wow! So you're saying I don't need any CAD software to model a box for my paints or a cell phone case and 3d-print it? Will the size be exactly the same?
Fillet feature is not working on my system blender 2.9.0 (win 10)
Right at 8:00, I tabbed out of edit mode and nothing was showing. What happened is my normal's were facing downward. If that happens, the back side of the face becomes transparent. I've seen this (and use it) many times. If you do a Shift-N to clean up normal's, and check off the Inside checkbox in the lower left, it will flip all your normal's, and your model will be visible again.
I noticed that you think the same as I do/did that booleans are bad. Not so, but N-Gons are way bad, especially if you're sending them to a game engine or (maybe) a 3d printer? There has to be a better way to tell Blender about the holes.
My 3D cursor is snapping to none of the points it is supposed to with the PDT Tool. Seems to offset to some different spot. Both the Intersection Tool and the 3point Centre of Arc Tool.
Hi Jonathan, I’m working in imperial units set to inches. When I use PDT to move the cursor to a given location in the way you describe, let’s say, and inch on the x. The curser moves only a fraction. What am I missing? Great series btw. My go to channel for this way of working in blender.
Planar ngons work great in Blender, since forever, what are you on about?
Blender v2.90.0 PDT v1.4.0 the fillet button does nothing. Does not create the fillet at all.
Hi MindCreative Studioes, If you are on blender version 2.9 I'm very sorry to say that it looks like PDT is having quiet some difficulty as the update has really screwed things up. If you could kindly post these "bugs" to the dev he would be very appreciative blenderartists.org/t/precision-drawing-tools-pdt-add-on-for-2-8x/1196313/56
I would also just like to let you know that in about just over a month i'll be updating the whole course to blender 2.9 Thanks for your patience
@@Keep-Making I have submitted a bug report and it has been found by the creator of PDT that some of the Blender API has changed. An update will happen at some point. Looking forward to finishing this tutorial.
@@mindcreativestudios4709 Great to hear. Sorry, you're going to have to wait a bit. Maybe downgrade to blender 2.83 for now and finish the rest of the course. I'll be sure to put up a video that will let those that have already done the course know the changes in blender 2.9 precision modeling workflows.
hey mate just ctrl + shift + B and type in your desired distance eg. 10 for 10 mm. Then in the bottom left you can click on the bevel icon and change the segments etc. I was having the same problem with the PDT tool so i just did this instead
I've instaled the V.1.4.2 of PDT on Blender 2.9 and the Fillet function works fine, but the Taper command still is off duty
PDT is in the built-in blender? I just found out that?
Will you be doing a tutorial on how to create a drawing in Blender?
Hey Ben, If you mean will I be showing how to export vector lines out of blender then the answer to this is yes in the next video I'll be introducing a new plugin that I've had developed to make this possible. I hope that helps.
@@Keep-Making sounds great, I look forward to that!
@@Keep-Making sorry to be a pain, I'm wondering if the vector file includes dimensions and a border or would this be added outside of Blender?
shift +A in edit mode suddenly stopped giving an option for adding single vert and all the things bellow that :( how can i fix it ?
Oh nwm I just restarted blender and forgot the add mesh: extra objet addon wasnt saved to preferences
Also be sure to check out the updated course
ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsXzUbBNz7-IvV7UJYHZzCdF
I have to type 0.0025 in the radius-field to get a correct fillet. Why did this happend (WIN10, Blender 2.92.0) Thx for help.
And YES, my system length is set on mm.
Start form the begging of this course here and i'm sure it will make sence with time... It's to do with your unit scale not set to 0.001 ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsXzUbBNz7-IvV7UJYHZzCdF
This is good and i learned a lot, but for holes why not only use booleans??
Hey Jonathan,
Good point, to be honest this was the break up the learning curve. You can't do a Bool cut form 2 plainar surfaces. One would need to be a 3d shape. As we have not entered the 3d space just yet in the series I kept it to manual hole generation for now. Plus this will help in the future if you need to fix weird and broken geometry int he future.
I'll give it a few more videos, but right now I'm thinking FreeCAD/CAD is a much better suited tool for this kind of work!
..CAD.
I tried FreeCAD a year ago or so 0but is was sooo terrible to use, and my model never turned out as I wanted even if I exactly (yes, 100% exactly) followed the tutorial then it turned out there was a bug in this and that version, the default properties were different, they changed some som MINOR thing and so on. Plus the GUI is not very intuitive (I think)... I tried Fusion 360 with personal/hobby license, that was much better but I am stuck with blender I think, it looks CAD is not for me. But for some job CAD is definately better. Give fusion 360 a try too if you have problems with FreeCAD AND you don't mind using an Autodesk product.
@@cstrx11 Yeah I found it very difficult for the first day, but after that pretty straight forward. There was no instant gratification. I only use it to designed machined parts, it's the wrong tool for complex objects, like models of people, etc.
When creating edges, is there any difference in using te "join 2 verts" in PDT of pressing F when you have the two vertices selected? To me it seems that same, but maybe there is some difference under the hood i'm missing?
Never mind, you answered that question 10 seconds later in the video XD
Hey Luc, If you are just going through the course now you might want to go check out the 2.91 course I have on my youtube channel
im working on a simple design of my own right now. but for some reason when i try to make fillets on one particular corner it generates way more vertices than specified and it looks like its expanding into a 3d space rather than flat like the other fillets on the same design. any ideas?
Hey Bash, This sounds like you have overlapping vertices. I would also suggest using the updated course ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsXzUbBNz7-IvV7UJYHZzCdF
@@Keep-Making yea I switched over to the new vid. Overlapping vertices was my first thought so I xrayd selected the vertices and merged by distance. Said none were removed. I also selected all and repeated that with none removed. Once I turn the design into 3d it looks like it’s creating fillet and then a single anchor point outside the curve. I resorted to doing it that way and the. Deleting the “anchor” vert. Not sure what the heck is going on.
Hello! I am running into an issue where when I try to Join 2 Verts. Blender is telling me that I only have one selected when it shows I have selected two on the screen. Is it because these are duplicated circles I am trying to link?
Hi Boisson,
Hmmmm I really don't quite know what would give you these results. The only think I can thing is that there are separate objects. In other words something have been creating in object mode and then you brought them both into edit mode. Trying doing into object mode again, select everything and click ctrl+J to join everything into one object and then go into edit more and see if that works?
@@Keep-Making I learned that I had to join them. My brother is pretty good at Blender and saw my issue right away. Thank you tons for getting back to me!
Brain fried, but getting there, thank you!
Hey Jonathan, I try to figure out why my fillet option within blender pdt wont work. I ve set top view in pdt and eg tried 3mm and XY segments. Any idea? Really grateful new user her :-)
Pretty sure this is a bug with Blender 2.90 and PDT. I'm having the same problem. The bevel tool works well though.
Hi Rapheal,
unfortunately blender 2.9 has made a mess of PDT. But don't worry in the next few weeks i'm updating the whole course to blender 2.9 and there will no longer be a problem. I also know the dev is trying very hard to get this fixed asap
Can we do this jn blender 2.79
Sorry RDilare, I only started using blender at 2.8. So I would not know if this is possible in 2.79
Man, you need to boost your modeling skills, some operations could be made much faster! Making holes - knife project tool, you making Ngon and cut shape of cycles, delete faces in centers, thats all. Also making fillets is destructive way, better to use bevel modifire in the end so you can tweak filets or shape of fillets.
I was thinking the same thing.. Not trying to disrepect the video, I do think it was informative and I want to continue learning about PDT. But I honestly think all of this video could be done in Vanilla blender faster and more efficiently. Most of the things done with the 3D cursor positioning, such as placing between median points or offsetting by exact amounts. The Shift-S menu has a few operations for manipulating the cursor, as well as the N panel where you can enter arithmetic expressions for the transform components of the 3D cursor. I can understand maybe trying to appeal to a traditional CAD user, but those ways of interacting with Blender are just the basics and should not be discarded all together.
It's also somewhat of an unknown feature, and I actually wouldn't really reccommend this route, but it's interetsing to think about. The curve object has functionality for 2D directly. You can take a curve object, select 2D and `fill both`, and then compose other curves inside of the same curve object. Those nested curves will be treated as 'boolean differences' directly. If PDT could interact with curve control points then that would be a much cleaner way of dealing with holes on 2D surfaces. This IMO would be better than some messiness with using 3D manifold cylinders to boolean onto the 2D non-manifold surface. It might work, especially with the Exact option given in 2.9, but it still feels kinda wrong lol. There's also the benefit that curves have variable resolution instead of verticies. The workflow given by PDT as it stands seems to not favor modifers/nondestructiveness at the 2D sketch level. It would be so cool to have it create fillets out of bezier handles and things like that.
if i do it 2.5 it well make it very small not same as him but if i do it 25 it come same as him and my line is 10mm tall not 100mm tall
Hmmm sounds like your unit scaling my be off. Take a look at the first video in the series to double check. It should be 0.001
Solvered. Works with Add New Vertex, but not 3D Cursor. Blender 2.92.0
the creator of the n-gons and the creator of the booleans spoke about the need to create holes in blenders ... and probably the creator of the boolans will implement this function.
check out this thread
devtalk.blender.org/t/holes-for-mesh-surfaces/
Hi Noki,
Wow that was a hell of a read but very interesting. Thanks for the shout out there a the end. Ya I've been talking with clockmender for quite a while now. He is the author of PDT. Would be amazing if they could make what there speaking off as that would be a great fusion of solid / organic workflows.
Here's hoping it comes soon to play about with.
The dislike is by Autodesk
The second dislike by Adobe.
Once you have clicked the "Add" menu away, you can get it back by hitting f9 ;)
I had trouble adding the faces. No matter how well I selected the vertices, and no matter which order I selected the vertices, Blender would bug out and create faces that extend inside the holes by connecting various vertices that don't have an edge on them. I ended up having to add a bunch of edges to make smaller faces to avoid the error. This is what my final product looks like with my tons-and-tons-of-extra-edges workaround: imgur.com/a/UslCXpP
Does anyone know what might be happening?
Hey David, I'm sorry to hear you're having some weird results. I have a feeling you might have overlapping vertices but I'm not 100% sure. Would you mind saving your file and sending it to Hello@makertales.com and I'll see what I can do to help out =)
@@Keep-Making Thanks for the help; the problem was, in fact, overlapping vertices. It's working now. Although, now I have a minor problem where the faces are transparent from a Top-Orthographic perspective (to the point where it looks like there are no faces), but the faces are visible from the Bottom Orthographic perspective. The light source is actually above the side that looks transparent, surprisingly. Do you have any idea what could cause that?
Edit: nevermind, I fixed that second problem by adjusting the Viewport Shading. It's amazing, I feel like I'm starting to get the hang of Blender.
I'm so happy to hear that David! Just keep marching along and you'll have a supper grasp of blender in no time 😁
PDT ???
Hi Rajendra,
Please take a look at the earlier course videos to understand what PDT is. ruclips.net/p/PL6Fiih6ItYsX3qdwhEyd77zy82bM-I8t1
I do hope that helps.
oops! fillet option doesn't work. (blender 2.90)
Hi Azizul,
Yup unfortunately the update has broken PDT a little bit. But don't worry I'm currently working on updating the whole series in the next week or two for blender 1.9.
@@Keep-Making we are still waiting ;)
@@abraham5148 great to hear, in the next week or two they will all start to be coming out.
9:00 TACKLE THIS BOTTOM HOLE
😂
This isn't productive at all, it's almost like making a rocket to make a precision hole, this video is 4 years old, is there a faster way to do this, I'm still struggling a lot with Blender to do things with precision. I'm a beginner in blender, I try to do everything in 2D, export with DXF and start from 2D to create 3D, I do 2D very quickly with Corel... I would have a way thinking in the way I mentioned 2D (dxf) to 3D blender with precision. I'm making a piece that mixes precision with semi-organic design
PDT plugin seems overly complicated for what it does. I can do basically all of these things as easily without this plugin. Shame.
In all honesty Karl, I agree with you. which is why i'm making a whole new series in blender 2.91 where there is no PDT tools.
Literally does nothing