CAD Transforms Movement Basics | Blender 2.9+ Through Precision Modeling | Part - 10

now let's touch on precision movement using cad  transforms what's up i'm jonathan and welcome   to Maker tales where i'm sharing my maker journey  to help you go further in yours so don't forget   subscribe and hit that little bell icon to never  miss an opportunity to keep making this video   is all about bringing together everything that  we've learned within movement within mesh within   object mode and showing you how i go about and  bring precision through an add-on called cad   transforms now cad transforms uses all the basics  of blender movement but takes it that one step   further so here we are one last time for movement  anyway on a nice fresh new blender file let's go   ahead and do exactly what we've just done on  all the rest which is let's select everything   delete it create ourselves a new cube let's set  this cube to exactly one millimeter and then let's   go ahead and reset the origin point down on that  bottom left hand vertex and with that now done   you should be pretty damn fast at this too now  let's go into some quite more advanced movement   now i'm saying this but i don't want it to scare  you i have given you all the knowledge you need   to understand exactly what is going on here  so first of all if this is the first time   with blender you've got to understand that what  we're using here is an add-on that works a little   bit differently to what is normal of blender so  normally an add-on just sort of sticks around   here on the side and that's how it lives its life  well cad transforms which is the add-on we're going   to be using lives here and the way that you use  it is by activating it you click it and that's   it now on you click out of it and that's it now  off now what i do is i set a shortcut for this   so go over to it i'm going to go right click and  assign a shortcut and for me i like to use alt c   and that is how i go in and then i go w to go  back up here and then i use alt c to go in there   now just before we move on let's go into edit  mode and you'll see if i type in alt c nothing's   going to happen we have to assign it in edit  mode as well because it is its own environment   so now if i go alt c it works and that's that  okay lastly before we start playing with CAD transforms we need to change some preferences  because if not you're not going to see this   so make sure you go here type in CAD you'll  get this card transforms and toggle down this   drop down menu and you'll see that there's a  whole bunch more information here i'm going to   set my font size to something really big like  70 this circle size i'm going to set it to 25   and then i want to set all of these here to 5.  this is the settings that i personally like to use   and that's it if you're wanting to change  the mountain of shortcuts that come with   cad transforms they're right here but personally  i really think that the shortcuts are perfect   now i'm going to just save my preferences  brilliant and now let's get to it so   CAD transforms let's turn it on and i want you  to look up on the top left hand side what is here   this is very similar to something we've been  playing about with for the last few episodes   it's our snapping menu so these are obviously  snapping controls oh look and the tools it   tells you what they are right here so we've got  g for movement r for rotation s for scale great   and what's this here this is x-ray oh so it's  got its own way of selecting through geometry   okay now the reason why i'm saying is it's a lot  nicer to see this there then going over to tools   and then seeing there's a mountain of shortcuts  trust me this is so easy it's unreal what we have   at our disposal here it's incredible what has been  created and completely for free but anyway first   of all let's go ahead and just do some normal  moving so let's go ahead we select our object   hit g nothing's moving what on earth is going on  take note this is a a from and too movement style   we're moving from here to there now that sounds  something very similar to what we've been doing   so far we've been moving from the origin point  to where that origin point is going to end up the   only thing that's different here is we are setting  the origin point at the beginning of the movement   so right this minute we have vertex snapping and  you'll see now that when i get close to a vertex   this round circle appears i click this now has set  the from point from here i can constrain just like   normally let's go on the x-axis and let's put  in a nice simple one so that's one millimeter   and then let's hit enter and that's a precision  movement done that fundamentally is cad transforms   yes it might not look like much but let's go ahead  and really explore this so first of all i want you   to take note that i have an entire video where  i've gone really in depth of this and that there   is in the card or linked down below where i show  you everything there is to do with this so with   that said let's go ahead and explore so we got our  movement g click now here's something interesting   a thing that i absolutely love with cad transforms  is you can now move around while you're doing a   movement zoom in zoom out just use your middle  mouse to move around and pan okay something   else that i like about cloud transforms we can do  something called stacked transforms so we can go   on the x direction move one millimeter and on  the y direction move one millimeter brilliant   well move one millimeter in the other direction  there we go now we hit enter and that's it done   that is stacked transforms so it's  moved one millimeter and one millimeter   from the origin point that i set however  the origin point is no longer needed   isn't that just amazing okay now i'm not really  going to go into super in depth of all of this   here but i am going to go ahead and show you some  things so if we go ahead and create a couple of   duplications of our cube here i just want you to  see some amazing things that are possible now so   let's go ahead and do some snapping so let's go  ahead and go g from this vertex we can snap to   that vertex great well we know here that is edges  so how do i do that well first we're going g once   again i'm going to hit spacebar and that clears  all snappings so nothing's going to snap here and   then i'm going to hit e and this will snap to any  edge okay clear that and when we go shifty that   gives me edge centers brilliant well from this  edge center i want to snap to that edge center   that's great in fact i want to snap to this bottom  edge center from this edge center all of a sudden   movement has just become so intuitive in  fact what we can do is do things like this   we can go ahead oops we can go ahead  and hit g go from this vertex here   then we can go space shift f for face centers  and we've just moved our vertex to that   face center now if you want to get really  crazy we can go ahead and go g select our vertex that we're wanting to work  with here let's move over to this cube   here because we can move down let's go ahead  and turn on face centers and n for normals   hold it right there this is editing jonathan  here and i haven't explained what a normal is   now don't worry about it too much but in  a nutshell just think of it as the facing   direction of a face so if a face is at a 45 degree  angle the normal is a 45 degree line off that face   and don't worry we're gonna go a lot more  into normals but that's in a few episodes time   and let's go to this face center and  go 0.1 millimeters up on the normal   isn't that just crazy the precision we can have  now and all of this is also possible within   our edit mode so let's go ahead let's select  all of these cubes let's go into edit mode   let's select this let's go control l and now with  cad transforms active let's go g so we're snapping   now we can remember we can always clear this with  space and then set a new snapping let's go v for   vertex let's go from this vertex let's go to this  edge center over here so let's go space shift e and   there we go edge center now what on earth why is  this so cool well the real reason why is because   we can do all types of snapping here you can see  in this shortcut that we have snapping to vertices   edges edge centers faces face centers  our grid perpendicular all the rest   it's all here and it's incredible how amazing  this is on top of that there's things such as   averages so let's go ahead let's select this  once again let's go g for movement let's select   this vertex here i'm wanting to move between these  two points exactly in the middle from with this   vertex well i go to this one i hit a and then i  go to this one over here and that's now the center   in fact what you can do is hit a  once again and that's now one third so that easily you can go ahead and do some  incredible snapping now that's movement let's go   ahead and take a look at the rest because there's  a lot more to movement than just moving there's   also rotation and scale now that's going to be  a little bit trickier isn't it because we know   that rotation and scale work a little bit  differently when it comes to origin points okay   okay let's go ahead and take a look at what's  going to happen so turning on cad transforms   selecting our object let's go r for rotation  brilliant now what's going to happen let's click   ho this strange thing has popped up i am currently  setting our own axis of rotation so let's say   this axis right here or using the same point  here i go shift z so now i'm just moving   our one axis down here so let's say i'm wanting  to go in this general direction so now we've got   this axis set up or we can go r and let's say  i wanted to go from here to there and now i'm   rotating on this axis and of course i've set  up our own plane here our own custom plane   so we can go on the x we can go also on  the y of this plane that is being set up   okay so how does that work with scaling then  well scale is the same you have to set up   you're from and two and now you're scaling now  here's something really interesting we know that   if we do scale we're going to be breaking our cube  right so if we go here select our cube go scale   from here to there let's set this  to 3.2 millimeters let's hit enter   our scale is automatically applied do keep  in mind that this teeny tiny bit of rotation   does come every now and then when you do scaling  so just be aware to go here and just set these to   zero and that's going to sort you out that is the  teeny tiny bit of miss precision that you can get   but when i say misprecision we are working  for objects of 10 millimeters which is 0.00001 millimeters of precision  and for things that are about   one meter in size this is going to be  about zero point zero zero zero zero six   millimeters this is exactly the same for most 3d  mesh programs from things like 3ds max and maya   of course it's not absolute precision but  in my eyes i've never needed six decimal   places of precision and i know that i've had all  the precision that i need from this but it's just   something to be aware of and i do know that things  are being worked on to try and fix this but just   be aware of it and it does not break precision  modeling at all within bret blender for this   okay now let's go into scaling and let's take  a look at one other thing so we scale this here   what happens if i wanted to do two-dimensional  scaling well for that i'm going to hit tab that   gives me two-dimensional scaling what if i wanted  three-dimensional scaling well three-dimensional   scaling is just with tab once again and like all  of these if we were to go ahead and click one of   these and we go ahead and add a rotation so let's  set this rotation there let's hit g now we're   moving well we can go ahead and constrain it on  the y and it has its local axis first and then if   we go y once again it's going to go to its global  axis from there now if you wanted to create your   own axis you can go ahead and hit c and now it's  asking you okay well where do you want to go well   we really shouldn't have set a point first we  should really set our own axis first and then it's   going to say okay well from there you've now set  that's going to be your x from this point there   so there's a very powerful way of doing your own  movement now if you want to learn a lot more about   CAD transforms i advise you to go and check  my video that i did going through absolutely   every single one but you don't have to for this  series i will be showing you every single control   that i do of CAD transforms within our precision  series well done for getting through that video   yes it's probably way too much information  but that's totally fine don't worry about it   cad transforms is something that you're going to  be learning through the entirety of this series   because it fundamentally is the way that i do  precision movement within blender yes blender   movement can do all of this but cad transforms  just makes it so much easier now remember i've   mentioned it once in this video actually a few  times but there is a link down in the description   to see a very long version of the cad transforms  sort of breakdown of everything you can do with it   if you want to learn more about CAD transforms go  down there but you don't have to because the rest   of the series will be learning it anyway stick  to the end for a little something extra a huge   thank you to my patrons you guys are absolutely  awesome and it is the real reason i can do things   like this and if you think i'm worthy of your  support and enjoying what i'm making here i would   love to see you there too thanks for watching  keep making and let the quest continue down in   the description is this small obstacle course to  make sure you've understood all the fundamentals   of CAD transforms and along with that is also a  solution video down there in case you get stuck

Channel: Maker Tales

Views: 14,452

Keywords: modeling, cad, hard surface modeling, how to, tutorial, alternative, technical drawing, accurate, modelling, precise, mm accurate in blender, how to do snap scaling in blender, precision addons for blender, blender 2.9, 2.91, blender, precision, learn, starting blender, how to learn blender, objects, 3d cursor, duplicating, object mode, edit mode, origin control, origin point snapping, snapping, movement, Scale, rotate, rotation, transforms, CAD, cad transform blender, CAD Transforms

Id: dSjeqRy3KS0

Length: 17min 15sec (1035 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 11 2020