Blender plugin (official thread)

[thopiekar 46]

Just reserving this thread for questions between plugin users here.

Additionally, feel free to add ideas for improvements, which are important for you as issues to the project page.

Looking forward to stimulating and inspiring ideas!

Thanks!

 

• Website: https://thopiekar.eu/cura/cad/blender/

Edited April 20, 2019 by thopiekar

[imonsei 1]

Hi Thopiekar.

 

Thanks for all your hard work.

I have a problem with your blender integration plugin.

I have installed the plugin and restarted cura.

 

I have made a simple model in blender 2.8beta

Can the fact that i'm using blender beta have something to do with it? I do have regular blender installed, too.

I'm attaching my .blend file, so you can try it, and see if it's just my file that is bad.

In the zip file are 2 blender files. The "hook" file is the one that fail for me, and the "stopper" does load.

hook_bathroom.zip

[thopiekar 46]

Hello @imonsei,

 

thank you for contacting me here 😃

I looked into your files and when opening "hook_bathroom.blend" I can also find no model inside.

Or am I missing something? 🙄

 

Thanks! 🙂

[imonsei 1]

Oooooh. It might be that blender 2.8B saves the actual models in the blend1 files. Hang on. Try this one

hook_bathroom.zip

[thopiekar 46]

Hmm, still empty on my side 😕

 

[imonsei 1]

What version are you using?

Now I'm just extra confused.

I just tried just unzipping the hook_bathroom.blend file in a seperate directory, and I can open that one fine by itself in 2.8B.

When I try and open it in blender 2.79 it doesn't load anything.

I think the new blender file format is somewhat different from the old one.

Oh well. I'll wait until blender 2.8 comes out of beta and just use export stl until then.

[thopiekar 46]

The latest stable version. If I'm not wrong the betas are distributed in zip files, right? How is your beta installed?

Please make sure that all blender files are assigned to the executable within your unpacked files.

The plugin inside Cura looks which file is assigned to .blend files and runs a command using this installation.

 

Please keep me posted about your problem. Would like to understand how it comes 😉

[imonsei 1]

oho. That might be an actual problem. When i try and change the file type association (windows 10) on .blend files from the 2.79 executable to the 2.8 one, it seems like the change takes effect, but when I double click a .blend file it still opens in 2.79

[thopiekar 46]

@imonsei Hmm, that sounds strange. Could be the case that you need to use a registry cleanup tool.

When programming the plugin I had to write algorithms to look for installations in at least 3 locations.

With Windows 10 (or slightly earlier) there is even a new place for file assignments (1 of those three mentioned before).

 

So after changing the assignment it works now? Does the model show up?

 

---

Another topic..

 

MACOS USERS: I need testers for my current macOS support. That also includes FreeCAD and OpenSCAD, but would need to prepare the plugin packages first. Therefore doing it by request.

 

https://thopiekar.eu:5443/cura-cad-integration/CuraBlenderPlugin/-/jobs/935/artifacts/browse

 

The principle is the same as on Windows: The plugin within Cura will determine the path of application your file (here .blend) is assigned to. As you can see above it works with my test file, even without 3D acceleration in my virtual machine. By the way, Blender doesn't run within this VM, because of the missing 3D acceleration, but the plugin works, because it is running Blender "headless".

Short instructions for Cura 4.0.0 users: Download the .curapackage file from the link above and drag+drop it into Cura. Finally, restart the application.

In any case, please give feedback otherwise I'm NOT going to publish any of this progress via Cura Marketplace.

 

Thanks!

 

---

 

 

Edited March 23, 2019 by thopiekar
Another iteration of the plugin, which works on Windows, Linux and macOS.

[imonsei 1]

Not yet. can't get it to accept my file association change.

I'll keep tinkering and keep you posted.

The issue will resolve itself when blender 2..8 comes out of beta and gets an installer.

[thopiekar 46]

Could someone give this build a try?

https://thopiekar.eu:5443/cura-cad-integration/CuraBlenderPlugin/-/jobs/1298

 

There are no major changes, but I worked on some features for the SolidWorks and Inventor plugin, which could have influenced this plugin, too.

 

Thanks!

- Thomas

[ardrift 1]

Hi Thopiekar,
I've also had issues with using Blender 2.80 and your plugin, Cura always gave the "invalid file" error and nothing was loaded.

I decided to investigate the cause of the bug, and found that with Blender 2.80 they've made some changes in the bpy API.

I found a list of key changes here, and also an implementation of a "legacy_mode" switch that checks if you're using v2.80 or earlier and runs the commands accordingly. I'm not that familiar with gitlab (neither it's self-hosted version) but I've pushed a commit to my github that implements these changes. Could you take a look at it and merge if possible? I've tested the changes in both Blender 2.79 and 2.80, though It's kinda my first collaboration like this so please treat accordingly, thanks in advance.

[thopiekar 46]

Hello @ardrift!

 

Thank you for taking time making the needed changes to the script!

I took a look onto it and it looks good for me! 👍

 

Will include this soon into my code and release a new version.

 

Many thanks (again)!

- Thomas

[imonsei 1]

Pretty awesome. I love it when people work together 😄

[thopiekar 46]

Applied @ardrift 's changes on a separate branch.

Feel free to download, install and test the built packages taken from here:

https://thopiekar.eu:5443/cura-cad-integration/CuraBlenderPlugin/-/jobs/1368/artifacts/browse

 

Currently, I'm too busy doing some testing, so please give feedback if it is working.

 

Thanks!

[thopiekar 46]

A short follow up: Added the @ardrift 's patch to my code, announced a new version 0.3.2 and submitted the package to Ultimaker.

 

Enjoy your weekend! 🙂 

[thopiekar 46]

By the way, do you know how we could benefit from multi-material printing using this plugin?

Is there a way using macros to access single bodies? Is there even a way to design things like that in Blender or does a model always consist of one part?

 

I'm planning to add multi-material support to my plugins soon. The SolidWorks plugin is able to do that via 3MF fileformat, but you can also export all bodies separately and merge them to a group of models (what the 3MF reader in Cura does by the way).

[imonsei 1]

Quick question. Have you guys manually registered the DLL files in blender, or have blender in your path?

[thopiekar 46]

No, you need probably @ardrift 's patches, if you upgraded Blender. Otherwise having Blender assigned to .blend files should be enough. The new plugin version was rejected by Ultimaker. I'll try to find time soon to correct the plugin and reupload it for a review by Ultimaker.

[imonsei 1]

Blender 2.8 released today!

[roland78 0]

hi. i installed from marketplace the blender extension and 
1) a lot of blender 2.8 files can;t be opened : invalid file=failed to load. 
2) when a file i succeed to be opened is scaled 10000% of original size or i check somewhere wrong in the settings?
3) when a file is opened i was asked if i want to be from inches in mm changed the .blend file. but i worked with mm and saved in mm . why is not keeping the mm from original? is impossible ,almoust, to know the sizes for a cone shape tube make it from 8 pieces and other stuffs on it.

in blender i can open all those files . 

any idea or what i'm doing wrong?
thank you.

[gamlastan 0]

On 10/25/2019 at 1:15 PM, roland78 said:

hi. i installed from marketplace the blender extension and 
...
2) when a file i succeed to be opened is scaled 10000% of original size or i check somewhere wrong in the settings?

Hi, I also have this. It's not really problem when the scale is correct. But sometimes it doesn't scale up.

 

[NickOfTime 0]

Hi, I installed the blender extension from the marketplace and i have no issues with importing the blender file into ultimaker cura except for one thing. When i import it in, for some reason even though i set the measurements in blender to be metres, it scales it down in ultimaker cura to millimeters.

I was just wondering, does anyone else have the same issue? Has anyone solved it yet?

[WartyNZ 4]

I have recently updated Ultimaker Cura to 4.13.0 and when I open Cura I get a message as below.

 

I deleted the Blender Plugin, restarted Cura, re-installed the CuraBlenderPlugin, restarted Cura and still get the same error. Is the CuraBlenderPlugin NOT compatible with Cura 4.13.0. It worked perfectly on the previous version of Cura?