this post was submitted on 10 Apr 2025
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I believe i recall there being an update specifically to the video editor within the past year or two, but don’t quote me on that. They have done updates to post processing, the timeline functionality, grease pencil, and i believe some other things that would apply to video editing, so i imagine it would be easier to work with. There are cad and measuring add-ons as well, i believe some free within blender itself.
I bought Davinci, so I'm happy with that, but I'll still check out the Blender version. I can't really complain about it, it does so much and is free.
As far as CAD goes, they aren't really usable to be fast in CAD. It's super cumbersome. You should be able to move things 1" to the right or left, put things at certain heights and move around the space in an easy way. I haven't found anything that can do that for imperial. Also, the tools for making dimensions is really bad and I don't think there's a way to make a blueprint unless you come up with something yourself. That being said, it's free and it's not their focus. They concentrate on the 3D portions.
I've started using FreeCAD for CAD work, I've used Fusion 360 for 5 years before trying FreeCAD (again, I tried it a few years ago) and it works pretty good.
It's different and it's taking some getting used to but it's working out quite nicely so far.
I'll give that a try again. I tried that about 3 or 4 years ago and couldn't make that switch, but I can't remember why, lol.
The 1.0 release helps a lot. They got a bit of a kick in the pants while Ondsel existed.
Oh definitely do. The recent improvements (in the last 1-2 years) have made it much more useable, and sometimes even intuitive.
Unless they've changed it in the last 2 releases, it's still that you have to decimal out the inches. So 1" would be .0833333. I don't have time for that shit. It's so easy in any other cad program from decades ago. Like I said, it's obviously not their focus and that's fine. It's just on my wish list.
The imperial units still default to feet, but you can append a " to type in inches! You can also get fractions with one in the numerator by typing /x, and if you go into preferences -> input -> keyboard and check "Default to Advanced Numeric Input" you can type in e.g. 3/8" as well as do things like addition, subtraction, and multiplication in your numeric inputs. ^-^
Please don't take this the wrong way, but I have no idea what you're trying to communicate. You seem to know Blender really well and can modify it easily. That is my worst nightmare. I wish there was a way for them to just have an architectural drawing units button, it would be so freaking easy to use. Making drawings would still be a pain, because you can't print to scale, but building things the right way in 3D would be a start.
Ah, I definitely could've formatted that better, sorry about that. ^-^ For what it's worth, I'm no expert with blender, I was just rambling a bit. I'll try again, but the tldr is that while it's probably not very good for engineering yet, it has been getting better at it bit by bit. Once you change two settings it's easy now to do what you were talking about and move objects by an inch without needing to calculate and type out decimal values.
The first setting is to switch the
Units Systembetween unitless (I think this used to be the only option), metric, and imperial. The dropdown for that is in theScenetab of the right sidebar (the icon is a cone behind a sphere with a dot above it, it's probably right above a red globe icon), under a folder calledUnits.To get to the second setting you need to go to the
Editdropdown at the top of the screen, selectPreferences..., pick theInputsection from the left sidebar of the window that pops up, and under theKeyboardfolder activate the checkbox labelledDefault to Advanced Numeric Input. My earlier message wasn't quite accurate, it turns out this setting is more important than I'd thought.With both of those settings changed, you can select something in your model and press
gto grab it, then x, y, or z to move along a particular axis, if you then type1blender will move the object one foot along that axis. If instead you type1"it will handle the conversion and move one inch.As a bonus, the advanced numeric input also lets you use fractions and do simple math, so if you want to move something by 3/8" along the x axis you can type
gx3/8"<enter>or if you want to move something by 1/16" less than 3/4" without bothering with the math, you can type ingx3/4"-1/16"<enter>, though unfortunately it's important to put the quotation mark after both fractions or the one without will be interpreted as that fraction of a foot.^-^' Hopefully that's a little clearer, like I said at the top it's probably still not the best tool for what it sounds like you want to do with it, but the thing you said was on your wishlist has been added and in my experience it did make blender significantly more useful for designing simple real world objects.
I'll take a look again, thanks.