# About FreeCAD, Svertchok and Blender


Commenting post [106](/?blog/2015-106): Yes, nikitron is the
Svertchok master :)

I think I can reply here too... This would be very hard... Although
the geometry algorithms of Svertchok probably could be adapted to work
in FreeCAD, the problem is the nodes system. There is no such system in
FreeCAD at the moment (some people are interested in creating one,
though, but so far nobody came up with actual coding).

Personally, I think it would be a lot of work to do that, and even more
work to maintain two different versions in sync after that, for not much
advantage. In FreeCAD, it would benefit almost only architecture. The
other engineering disciplines would have little use for something like
that. While in Blender, it benefits other peopleinterested in generating
algorithm-based geometry too.

Also, Blender is based on a very flexible, free-form mesh system, while
FreeCAD uses much more rigid brep solid geometry. You would cut some
freedom of Svertchok if it had to be adapted to work with solids only.

The key of working with architecture in FreeCAD (I need to write more
about that), I think, is to not consider solely FreeCAD as your
modeling/authoring tool. We take always great care of that with the Arch
workbench, that you are able to work with mesh data imported from other
apps like Blender or Sketchup, which are fast, free-form mesh modelers,
where you are not bound to physical limitations, and your creativity is
not limited by stupid BIM tools... It is the work of the BIM tool to
bow to your creativity, not the contrary.

I don't think any BIM app out there has the same capability as FreeCAD
to bring mesh data all the way up to valid BIM objects. Think of a mix
between Revit and Rhino (which has excellent mesh-to-solid converison
tools). You can really take the Blender monkey head mesh, and turn it
into a valid wall object in FreeCAD, if your meshes are clean solids (no
face superposition, no manifold edges), no further work is needed.

So for me, the real powerful place to have Svertchok is in Blender,
where you can make it do almost anything, and explore forms without
constraints. Then you have a little work, which is unavoidable when you
have that freedom, to rationalize those forms, extrude faces into solid
stuff, etc. Then, you import it into FreeCAD, convert everything to BIM
objects, and that's it. This would of course be more comfortable with a
tool like Svertchok directly inside FreeCAD, but at the cost of a
portion of your freedom.

This focus we put on keeping FreeCAD and specially the Arch workbench as
open as possible to all kinds of data input, explains partly why its own
creation tools (wall, window, etc) have a lower priority (at least for
me), and therefore are not as developed as one would wish yet. But I
think this is the correct order: First we must make sure the model is
open to maximum freedom. This is something very precious, and very
opposite to more capable BIM apps like Revit. Then we think to the ease
of use of the creation tools. If we were to do the contrary, the
decisions we would take with the creation tools would sooner or later
shave off some of that freedom.

Of course that doesn't mean we cannot have powerful creation tools like
Revit! Certainly we'll get there at some point in time. But since our
resources are limited ([very few
people](https://github.com/FreeCAD/FreeCAD/commits/master/src/Mod/Arch)
working on the Arch workbench), it inevitably goes slow and one has to
carefully think of priorities.

If you think of the Unix philosophy of "instead of one all-in-one app,
rather many simple tools, each doing one task well", this
Blender->FreeCAD scheme fits in pretty well. Never we'll have in
FreeCAD mesh modeling tools of the quality of Blender. And it would be
very hard for Blender to gain the technical and precision tools that
FreeCAD now has. For me the path is clear: We need both.