I've done some design sketches with Grease Pencil recently and it is indeed super intuitive. I could sketch over an underlay (so you can bring in initial scanned paper sketches or images), work in layers (separate ones for doors, windows, walls), have a separate Grease Pencil Object for each floor, and then I could do 2D in 3D by translating the first floor above the ground floor by the required head room and sketch in the connecting stairs. Using a digital pen, it didn't feel like 'modelling' or 'drafting' at all, it felt more like sketching.
I sketched in a facade in Grease Pencil, made it into a mesh, extruded and shaped it in edit mode to give it volume, and went back to sketching on it in Grease Pencil. It was cool being able to export each GP object out as SVG directly and the SVG played fine in Inkscape. One thing I wished for while using this workflow though, was to have maybe custom GP brushes for walls (that automatically give you double lines spaced out by a width you can enter), and doors and windows (of sizes you can set), already you can set line weights and layers, and you can constrain your line to run parallel to any of the axes or a radial constraint. Those custom brushes will in my estimation make the GP work flow even more applicable to a sketchy CAD workflow, and a tighter integration with MeasureIt_Arch would mean you can complete your entire sketch design proposal with GP, including indicative dimensions and annotations, all of which you can export straight to SVG (and as PDF).
I like the demo utility @JanF has developed using GP and SV nodes, and the strokes based workflow it supports, it would be cool to have this workflow based on brushes which I have described as an alternative in the same suite of tools.
*Edit, not sure if brushes best define the intended approach, but I checked and there exists a multiple strokes modifier which acts on grease pencil stroke to give parallel lines as described, with adjustable settings to boot (see screen shot below). Perhaps the way to fuse this with JanF's workflow would be to draw with the modifier activated but have it such that when you place the cross strokes for creating doors and windows, as the components are created in 3d, 2d symbols are also dropped in place, and you can toggle off the 3d mode to focus on 2d sketching if require. Reminder here that the aim is to achieve really cool early stage concept drawings, however I see potential nonetheless, with further optimization, for even full blown CAD documentation. All in all still pretty keen and enthusiastic about getting more out of Grease Pencil.
Hey @Moult
I haven't used it in awhile but I just noticed the Wall from annotation tool is no longer there?
Is it still possible to draw walls and instance from a line like in this video:
Comments
I've done some design sketches with Grease Pencil recently and it is indeed super intuitive. I could sketch over an underlay (so you can bring in initial scanned paper sketches or images), work in layers (separate ones for doors, windows, walls), have a separate Grease Pencil Object for each floor, and then I could do 2D in 3D by translating the first floor above the ground floor by the required head room and sketch in the connecting stairs. Using a digital pen, it didn't feel like 'modelling' or 'drafting' at all, it felt more like sketching.
I sketched in a facade in Grease Pencil, made it into a mesh, extruded and shaped it in edit mode to give it volume, and went back to sketching on it in Grease Pencil. It was cool being able to export each GP object out as SVG directly and the SVG played fine in Inkscape. One thing I wished for while using this workflow though, was to have maybe custom GP brushes for walls (that automatically give you double lines spaced out by a width you can enter), and doors and windows (of sizes you can set), already you can set line weights and layers, and you can constrain your line to run parallel to any of the axes or a radial constraint. Those custom brushes will in my estimation make the GP work flow even more applicable to a sketchy CAD workflow, and a tighter integration with MeasureIt_Arch would mean you can complete your entire sketch design proposal with GP, including indicative dimensions and annotations, all of which you can export straight to SVG (and as PDF).
I like the demo utility @JanF has developed using GP and SV nodes, and the strokes based workflow it supports, it would be cool to have this workflow based on brushes which I have described as an alternative in the same suite of tools.
*Edit, not sure if brushes best define the intended approach, but I checked and there exists a multiple strokes modifier which acts on grease pencil stroke to give parallel lines as described, with adjustable settings to boot (see screen shot below). Perhaps the way to fuse this with JanF's workflow would be to draw with the modifier activated but have it such that when you place the cross strokes for creating doors and windows, as the components are created in 3d, 2d symbols are also dropped in place, and you can toggle off the 3d mode to focus on 2d sketching if require. Reminder here that the aim is to achieve really cool early stage concept drawings, however I see potential nonetheless, with further optimization, for even full blown CAD documentation. All in all still pretty keen and enthusiastic about getting more out of Grease Pencil.
Hey @Moult
I haven't used it in awhile but I just noticed the Wall from annotation tool is no longer there?
Is it still possible to draw walls and instance from a line like in this video: