JTxt

In Blender, with care and if you're clever, you can do many of the same things you can with a CAD program... good enough for many cases. But Blender is still more of an artist tool than an engineer tool. For serious uses you're going to run into the limits.

There are free cad parametric modelers. FreeCAD is one.

Blender's internal representation of objects is vertices (defined with IEEE single precision floats) connected by lines, and faces --just the shell of the object, and no real curved surfaces (just more and more faceted to approximate curves, and smoothed normals to look curved.) It also does not have guaranteed precise measurements. Blender can do some parametric and Boolean operations and many of the same things, but sometimes it fails and the limitations get in the way.

Some have built CAD tools into Blender, but it's a hack on an artist's tool. For some types of CAD projects, it'll do great, particularly in some very creative directions, but I'd start with the other tools you mentioned.

I export Inventor models to Blender for better rendering and animation.

But now there's Tabs for different default window setups: Layout, modeling, Sculpting, UV Editing... So you shouldn't have to change the setups much, they're already designed for the task. You can can still customize/ create your own. That feature was already there as a drop down but now it's more accessible and you can add more default layouts.

'Too hard to learn' was a legitimate concern in the early days... even though the payoff is huge. Perhaps it still is some, but not more than most other 3d suites. The interface is so much discoverable, and has switchable key maps so that it's similar to other 3d apps.

https://www.google.com/search?q=onenote+file+parser https://github.com/dropbox/onenote-parser

https://portal.influxdata.com/downloads

Perhaps also consider influxdb

https://bitmidi.com/search?q=doom

I had to dig more to remember the level format and search for https://bitmidi.com/search?q=E1m4

Perhaps a crawler can find the identical file (checksum/md5) and collect meta data: alternate filenames, urls, zip archive names... It was next to this file in this list/zip archive... And in this sub folder name, on this page on this wayback machine link... So associations can be built automatically?

Also for each unique checksum with listed alternate file names, Perhaps user content: ratings, similar files, comments... A wiki like page where the automaticly generated meta data can be vetted... Oh and suggested sound font and other settings to play that particular file maybe.

Fun challenge!

BTW https://bitmidi.com/search?q=E1m1 crashes it for me.

It's cool you can drag a file on it to play. Except on mobile, so perhaps the ability to play from url.

Awesome work, thanks! Looking forward to seeing where this goes.

-What do you want to make with it? Who will that effect? How?

Why browse?

-How many LOC have you written in the past week on something you want to make? (...or that would get you close to something you want to make?)

Why force yourself?

Why just learn?

...

What do you do instead?

If you continued, what would your life be like in 5 years?

Would the people previously mentioned be missing out?

Would that be a bad thing?

You can browse projects with the 5 year old then view the source and figure out how they work. Show that they can change things.

It's awesome that you want to promote creation over just consuming content like most of their peers.

Scratch your own itch with it too. Make a 3d renderer or CRUD app, fractal explorer, or game... they might like to see what can be made and what excites you.

They may get into the story and animation projects made by other kids first, that's good too.

No you don't need a video on your login screen.

The result reminded me of the old Logitech Scanman handheld scanner. except that had a 1d light sensor (like a flatbed scanner) and a radial encoder attached a to a roller to advance the scan lines down and the user pulled it down. (kind of like a 1d mechanical mouse.) I had a ton of fun with that growing up.

https://scratch.mit.edu/search/projects?q=Conway%27s+Game+of...

(Warning, some have music.)

(I made one before scratch had arrays, in 2008 but it no longer works.)

Also, here' the article's project in Phosphorus a javascript scratch player, for those without flash.

https://phosphorus.github.io/#164407978

Interesting problems you have... Balancing flexibility/power/precision and simplicity/low learning curve/finger input.

I'd be tempted to go more the flexibility route... but what is essential? for who? Where's the line drawn for "dead simple"?

Would precision for the "drafters" slow down/confuse the "doodlers"?... Could build flexibility underneath and carefully build an advanced UX that people can graduate to, but at what costs?... At what point is the focus lost?

Sometimes the original may not be able to handle the traffic.

Most features can be found in Menus. Every clickable UI element has a tool tip if you hover.

With your mouse over the 3d port, hit the spacebar and fuzzy search for commands.

Most times there's a menu option there's a hotkey listed to the right... or you can right click a menu item and "Assign hot key."

You can also right click things and click "Online Documentation" for documentation on it.

Granted, I don't see an easy way to discover that "TAB" is for switching between edit and world mode when an object is selected... though you can switch modes in the "Object Mode" drop down 3d port menu. there's not a tool tip for it. ...and probably other things. It would be helpful if a better getting started guide/beginner walk through (like this introduction.) could be found in the splash screen and help menu easier.