Construction Lines - Accurate Cad Modelling Add-On For Blender

by Dan Norris in Addons


Item Rating

This item has an average rating of 4 from 49 ratings by the community.

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  • Alex
    8 days ago

    Well, just bought the plugin and gave it a try.
    I am a former Autocad/Fusion 360/Rhino modeler but now I make everything in Blender. Sometimes I miss CAD features, tried Cad Transform tools (they do not support Blender 4.x) but don’t find them intuitive and prefer to use Blender 4.X much better snaps with “B-shortcut” points. Construction lines – sometimes they are vital, and I used to create them from objects and through in some “Helper collections”.
    The plugin is great but lacks some features. I hope the author can read through and implement some of these.
    1. Window/Crossing selection tool – that great! I cannot understand why for these years of Blender existence this left/right window selection tool is not available! Even 3D max has it! Not speaking about CAD apps. SO many posts about it in the Blender feature wish list but still none. So I applause for this feature!
    2. When adding a circle and make it smoother with Ctrl+mouse wheel, it would be really nice to see the vertex count. It is Blender after all, so I always need to bear in mind vertex count for topology matter.
    3. There is no Snap to origin and snap to face center. I would say it is a huge dealbreaker for me. In 80% of cases I snap the centers of objects, its origins. And you have neither snap to origin, nor snap to a face. That’s really bad. As I remember well Cad Transform has these snaps. They are must have!
    4. The plugin doesn’t snap to generate modifiers, for example solidify. I use in 90% this modifier, but with your plugin cannot snap to generated geometry, only to the origin. Again, that’s a dealbreaker! Blender snaps perfectly to generated geometry (solidify modifier).
    5. Add mid mouse drag sideways to lock the axis as in Blender standards, it is much quicker and mor intuitive then pressing the X,Y,Z axis.
    6. In move + divide, instead of /3, make it ctrl+scroll mouse wheel to add copies, so you can intuitively see if you are enough of the copies or need some more. Hard Ops/Box cutter have such an enhanced Array modifier. And make it as an option to create an Array modifier after adding these duplicates. It is always neater and cleaner to make the copies as an editable modifier, rather than making as real copies/duplicates. But not always, so as an option.
    7. Extrude for making holes – awesome but… It will reset ALL the transformation (scale, rotation, location). So if I have a rotated 15 grad cube (so in transformation section it is 15 grad Z-rotated for example), and after I cut out the hole with your “extrude” it will reset the rotation transformation! So I will need to rotate the cube back 15 grad, so it is parallel to world axis, apply Rotation, and rotate it back. Now the transformation is back to 15 grad and you gismo box correct relative the rotated cube, and not parallel to the word axis as it was after the extrude. Please fix it! It should not reset the object transformations! Now it is a pain in the nack.
    8. Make it possible to edit the length of the line, just selecting the pivot point and set a new length. For example I made the line 2051.121432543 – I want it to be exactly 2000! With the length I made it, it is pretty hard to move the empty point to make it exact 2000. Box cutter/Hard Ops has the similar feature, called “Set edge length”. Makes exactly what I wrote.
    9. Make angle snaps – 15, 30, 45. So I want to draw a line for example at 45 grad without making it at first straight, then rotating.
    10. Grid Sub Div – works only on an upper grid, for subdiv (when you zoom in), and sub-sub div grids it doesn’t snap.
    11. Clean overlaps (when drawing one rectangular over the other). Not sure if it was possible but was nice as an option.
    12. Origin point always stay in 3D cursor, not in the geometry center as would be logical! You need to always reposition it, otherwise you cannot scale normally (while it scales relatively from the origin point by default).
    13. Juts t small question about modeling a bookcase. Why did you calculate the distance between vertical bookcase spacers, when you could just duplicate the left one to the right and then divide it by the number of these spacers to be set in between?

    • Daniel Norris

      6 days ago

      Hi Alex,

      I've released an update to Construction Lines with a number of the points you have noted being addressed. Please login to your Blender Market account and download the latest version.

      As mentioned in response to your YT comment, most of these items are on my development list and if they haven't been addressed in the recent update they will be in the future.

  • Dan
    14 days ago

    On my Mac, running Blender 4.2, it works so badly that I eventually had to uninstall it.

    • Daniel Norris

      14 days ago

      It sounds like there may be a conflict. Please contact me through the feedback form on my website. I always respond to emails and it may be a simple fix.

  • Shodan0101
    24 days ago

    Amazing!!! Thank you for this amazing tool! Finally CAD/3ds Splines/similarity in Blender!! Love using your tool as a Level editor like Ultimate Doom Builder, can't wait to see what is coming next! <3

  • Nate
    about 1 month ago

    Concept-wise I love this addon, I always found Blender's modelling paled in comparison to Sketchup, which is what this addon is trying to do, translating Sketchup modelling to Blender. However, holyheck it's busted. It does a lot right, a lot not quite right. I seem to have the magic ability to make it break as soon as I start using it, it genuinely comes across to me as a skill issue though. If there is a place I can submit bugs when I find them, I'd happily use it since this is one of the few addons for blender I'm going to be deeply invested in just due to the fact it's a infinitely huge improvement on Blender's modelling system, until it breaks in a way I don't understand.

    In it's current state, I'd probably rate the addon a 3/5, but since I know I'm going to forget to update it, I'll set it to 4/5 since it's a addon worthy of praise, it's still just half baked.

    • Daniel Norris

      about 1 month ago

      Thanks for the review, Nate. Please do get in touch to report any issues (https://www.dndrawings.com/feedback), I always respond. I'm working on the next release, so if there are some bugs, I'll fix for this coming release.

  • Frank Hilton
    about 2 months ago

    The tools for this addon are great. My only issue is that it makes Blender run very sluggishly for me. With it uninstalled Blender is super fast. Not sure if there is an addon conflict or not. I do have a beefy PC so I know its not that.

    • Daniel Norris

      about 2 months ago

      Thanks for the review, Frank. It sounds like there's a conflict with another 3rd party add-on. Can you contact me through my website form and I'll help resolve the issue?

  • Basem Ali Deeb
    3 months ago

    This is exactly what I was looking for. I hope you continue developing this add-on. I can't imagine Blender without it.

  • Sean Hepburn
    4 months ago

    Take my money, this is just ace!

    • Daniel Norris

      3 months ago

      Thanks Sean.

  • Christian Meyer
    4 months ago

    My professional background is in civil engineering. I rarely use Blender in my work but often for private projects. I've always found it a bit tedious to work accurately and to scale with Blender. This addon helps me tremendously with such kind of projects. In addition to the construction lines, my favourites are clearly the object snap and the improved Extrude tool.

  • Randy Nash
    7 months ago

    This item is fantastic and just what I was looking for. It will help me greatly in the creation of architectural design. Thanks for the wonderful useful tool for Blender.

    • Daniel Norris

      7 months ago

      Thanks so much for the review. I'm really pleased to hear that Construction Lines is proving useful!

  • sorneguerot
    8 months ago

    Great tools for ArchViz. Really useful.

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Sales 5900+
Customer Ratings 49
Average Rating
Dev Fund Contributor
Published over 4 years ago
Blender Version 4.2, 4.1, 4.0, 3.6, 3.5, 3.4, 3.3, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0, 2.93
License GPL
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