Using Blender to Create Detailed and Accurate Production Drawings

Learn how to create beautiful production drawings for your maker designs in Blender, using a couple of add-ons.

Production drawings are an essential piece of the manufacturing puzzle for many products. These documents provide machinists and skilled makers with the dimensions, material specifications, and other details that are vital to creating precise parts. Of course, though, they can also look really cool.

Making your own detailed and accurate production drawings is easy with tools like Blender, but how do you do it? Join us as we explore the steps you can take to turn any 3D model into a beautiful production drawing that will look as good on your wall as it would as a real-world product.

What Do You Need to Make Production Drawings in Blender?

You need to gather a handful of resources before you can start working on your production drawings. Two Blender add-ons are required for this project, though they are both free and can be found online.

• Blender 2.8+
• TechDraw Blender Add-on
• MeasureIt Blender Add-on
• 3D Model/Blend File

Step 1: Installing the Blender Plugins

Blender has a handy built-in add-on repository that makes the first step simple. Go to Edit > Preferences > Add-ons and search for MeasureIt. You should see an add-on with the same name appear, and you can click on the checkbox in the left-hand corner to activate it.

You will need to download theTechDraw add-on from GitHub before installing it. Once this is done, head back to the Add-ons menu in Blender and select Install at the top of the window. From here, select the zip file that came with the add-on and open it to get it installed. You will see the add-on appear in the menu once this has been done, but you need to select the checkbox in the top left to activate it.

Step 2: Importing/Opening Your 3D Files

With your add-ons installed, it’s time to open your 3D model files in Blender. The way that you do this will depend on the files you have access to. BLEND files are opened by going to File > Open and thenselecting the file you want to work with. Other file types can be imported by going to File > Import > Import as… (select your file type) and then selecting the file from the window that opens.

You need to check your dimensions before going further. You can find and change the units you are using by going to the Scene Properties menu on the right of the screen; we picked millimeters for our project. Modify your model's dimensions by going to the Item tab on the right of the screen and changing the dimensions at the bottom of the list.

Step 3: Adding a Background/Camera

TechDraw adds a tab to the right of the screen once it is installed. To add a background, select the TechDraw tab and expand the Layout Settings section to see the Sheets options you have available. We chose an A4 format with a landscape orientation, but you should pick a sheet size that matches the size of the object you are working with. You may need to edit the dimensions of the sheet after you hit Add sheets.

You also need a camera in your scene to produce quality renders of your technical drawing, and this is something TechDraw can do for you. In the camera section of the Layout Settings menu, add a collection for your camera to be part of and hit Add camera.

With your camera and background sheet in the scene, you can move to Settings for render in the Layout Settings panel. Choose the main background object for the sheet, and the camera you just added as the camera, before hitting Update settings to automatically resize your camera. If you were to render an image at this point, you'd notice that you can’t see much.

Go to the Scene Properties section on the right of the screen and change the surface color to white, followed by going to the Render Properties section and turning on the Freestyle option. This will make your objects show up as lined outlines when you render your image.

Step 4: Creating a Layout With Your 3D Models

As you can see from the render above, this production drawing is very bland. It needs more objects before we can add dimensions to the mix, but this is something that the TechDraw add-on can help us with. Head to the Parts Settings tab and select the object you are working with as the Target.

Below this, you will see a grid of checkboxes that creates duplicates of your object in different orientations. Our brick object only needs to be viewed from three directions to gather all of its dimensions: top, side, and bottom. Check each box for the duplicates you want to create and hit Add part view to create them. You can change the Draw Distance modifier if your parts are too far apart or close together.

Step 5: Adding Dimensions to Your Production Drawing

It’s finally time to add some dimensions to your production drawing. Start by selecting the object you are adding dimensions to and going into Edit Mode with Vertex Select enabled. Select two vertex points that have a line between them, and then go to the View tab on the right of the viewport. You should see a tab labeled MeasureIt here.

Click on Segment in the Add Measures section to create a measurement between the vertex points you have selected. You can find each of the measurements you have added in the Items section of MeasureIt Tools, enabling you to change the color and positioning of your measurement annotations.

Alongside line measurements, you can also add angles, arcs, labels, and other annotations to your designs. Our blocks are very simple, but you may want to get more creative with your production diagram.

Step 6: Adding Materials and Other Specifications (Optional)

The sheet you added to your project in step 3 has a section for details about your designs. You can edit this by selecting the text in question and heading into Edit Mode, as this will let you change the text directly. You can also choose to delete the text altogether or add new text in Blender to improve your drawing.

Step 7: Rendering the Production Drawing

The final step in this process is here, and it’s time to create the image you wanted from the very beginning. Start by going to the MeasureIt Tools Render tab and clicking Render. It will take a couple of seconds to finish, but you can follow it up by going to the main Render menu > Render Image. Close the window that appears once the image is rendered.

You need to overlay the two images that you have created (Blender saves them for you), and this is done from the Compositing Workspace. Tick the box that says Use Nodes before carrying out the following actions to get the results in the image above. Using Blender nodes can be a tricky learning process, but you can find guides around the web to help with this.

• Add an Alpha Over Color node and connect it to the Render Layers node.
• Add an Image Input node and connect it to the Alpha Over node before linking it to an image called measureit_output.
• Add a Viewer Output node and connect it to the Alpha Over node.

Open the Image Editor in a separate panel and link it to an image called Viewer Node using the drop-down menu at the top of the editor. This will display an image including your background, objects, and dimensions. On the toolbar, click Image > Save As to create the final version of your production drawing.

Adding Flair to Your Production Drawings

The production drawing we have created is great for manufacturing, but it doesn’t look that good. You can do loads to enhance the visual appeal of your production drawings. Changing the colors of your models is a nice start, but you can also change the fonts you use or even find a new background for your drawing.

Using Your Production Drawings

Production drawings like this are essential in the world of manufacturing, but they can also make great pieces of art when you dedicate enough time to them. Websites like Fractory and Xiometry require documents like this to create items using CNC machines and other industrial equipment. Of course, though, the drawings can also be great for your own work.