In course of this project the TopLab uses the 3D Desing Program Blender(TM) as alternative platform for mechanical design, animation and rendering [GNU Gernal Public Licence]. Capabilities of the program are investigated, which are partly not found in standard 3D CAD solutions. This addresses not only fluid and particle simulations, animation and rendering features. Blender is permanently advanced by an international community of developers. New specialized plug-ins are successively invented.
A wide range of interfaces enables importing and exporting different data formats. By this Blender can not only be involved into standard mechanical CAD design processes, but also straight into additive manufacturing ("3D printing").

As a year long user of CAD platforms like ProEngineer, AutoCAD/GENIUS and Solid Designer I was always looking for public alternatives. Blender, in fact is a 3D modeling and simulation program, which originally was not designed for common mechanical design. However, engineering processes of today more and more tend to involve numeric optimization models, measurement data and technical simulation packages. By using Python scripting Blender is open for 3rd party packages. Motion captureing is a fairly new feature of the program, which is of interest for bionic studies of dynamics.

This is a long term educational project with impacts on Bionic Robotics and Interactive Deposition Analysis for Snow and Sand (IDASS). It is a process of knowledge aquisition and management, selected topics will be refined and edited especial for mechanical engineers.

Educational Materials

• Mind Maps and Posters
• Presentations
• 3D models
• Monograph


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