Blender Plugin

Introducing the VU.CITY Plugin for Blender. It's a stremlined toolbar designed to help Blender beginners prepare CAD models for VU.CITY. The one-click workflows include:

Merging multiple meshes into one object;
Flipping models from Y-up to Z-up and back;
Rescaling models;
Zeroing and geolocating models;
Correcting visual issues caused by smooth shading;
Identifying and helping to correct flipped faces;
Triangulating n-gons and quads.

Latest release

Installation instructions

Save the VUCITY Plugin.py file anywhere on your computer;
Open Blender and go to Edit / Preferences / Add-ons / Install;
Find and select the VUCITY Plugin.py file you downloaded;
Enable the plugin by selecting the tick box next to the plugin name;
Return to the 3D scene, then press N to reveal the VU.CITY Plugin the right hand side of the view port.

How does it work

Start Here:

Select & Merge Meshes: Selects the objects and merges them into one. This option must be enabled in order for the following operations to work;
Rotate by 90°: Flips X-rotation by 90°

Optimise / Reduce Detail:

High: Collapse vertices that are less than 10 cm apart;
Medium: Collapse vertices that are less than 5 cm apart (recommended);
Low: Collapse vertices that are less than 1 cm apart.

Zero & Geolocate Model:

Origin to Geometry: Sets the origin to a point on the base of the model;
Zero Model: Moves the model to World Origin (0, 0, 0);
Geolocate: After completing the above two operations, you can enter your Eastings, Northings and AOD / Height coordinates into the X, Y, Z fields respectively to geolcate your model.

Appearance:

Fix Shading Smudges: Fixes smooth shading issues / dark smudges;
Remove Materials: Removes all materials associated with the model.

Rescale Model:

Scale x0.1: Decreases the scale of your model by factor 10;
Scale x10: Increases the scale of your model by factor 10.

Adjust Faces:

Reveal Flipped Faces: Reveals flipped faces (for models that appear to have holes / gaps when imported into VU.CITY);
Correct Flipped Faces: Recalculates normals to correct flipped faces (experimental - some manual editing may be needed);
Triangulate N-gons and Quads: Translates n-gons & quads to tris (for models that appear to have holes / gaps when imported into VU.CITY).

Special note to Sketchup and VU.CITY Create users

SketchUp and the VU.CITY Create tool both export FBX files in the ASCII format, which Blender cannot import. To import an ASCII FBX file into Blender, please first convert it from ASCII to Binary using this converter from Autodesk.