A way to scale mesh by axis or units similiar to blender?

[Drizz]

Hello. I am currently using realthunders Freecad branch. 2022.1021

As the title states, is there any way to control how an imported mesh scales in FreeCAD? Using the "scaling factor" is difficult and requires a lot of trial and error to get it correct. If not, anybody know of any macros or some workflow that makes it easy to move files from blender into freecad?

Thank you for any help in advance.

[chrisb]

As the title states,

As you are asking here in the FreeCAD forum, you may consider to explain how it works in blender. AFAIK can Blender export STL format, which can be imported into FreeCAD.

[jeno]

If not, anybody know of any macros or some workflow that makes it easy to move files from blender into freecad?

There are a few options to transfer mesh data from Blender to Freecad

Blender Export options

drizz.png (46.94 KiB) Viewed 440 times

STL as well as PLY are unitless. The default unit in Blender is 1 meter. That means that a cube with a size of 1m is saved in STL as 1 unit. Freecad assumes that the STL is saved in 1 unit = 1 mm. It is the same for PLY plus additonally you need to convert quads to tris as PLY accept both but Freecad only import triangles. To work around this STL as well as PLY export offers scaling options.
The better way is to use Collada (no default option) or OBJ or glTF. They all support units. So the transfer needs no addditonally scaling operations.
Of course the mesh in Blender should be in scale.
Blender is a mesh modeler and offers a lot of tools to manipulate and alter meshes. You should use these.

cheers

[jeno]

As the title states,

As you are asking here in the FreeCAD forum, you may consider to explain how it works in blender...

In Blender you can scale
- all directions -> x+y+z
- only one direction -> x or y or z
- except one direction -> x+y or x+z or y+z

cheers

[drmacro]

If not, anybody know of any macros or some workflow that makes it easy to move files from blender into freecad?

There are a few options to transfer mesh data from Blender to Freecaddrizz.png
STL as well as PLY are unitless. The default unit in Blender is 1 meter. That means that a cube with a size of 1m is saved in STL as 1 unit. Freecad assumes that the STL is saved in 1 unit = 1 mm. It is the same for PLY plus additonally you need to convert quads to tris as PLY accept both but Freecad only import triangles. To work around this STL as well as PLY export offers scaling options.
The better way is to use Collada (no default option) or OBJ or glTF. They all support units. So the transfer needs no addditonally scaling operations.
Of course the mesh in Blender should be in scale.
Blender is a mesh modeler and offers a lot of tools to manipulate and alter meshes. You should use these.

cheers

Or export the file directly from Blender with a Sverchok WriteFCStd node.