I keep circling the idea of building physical stuff. Robots, furniture, interactive pieces. Things that live in the real world. For a while, the gap between a design in my head and a physical object felt huge. So I started stitching together a workflow, a set of tools that would let me move from a precise, parametric design to a rendered, interactive showcase.

The Workflow: A Look at Each Step

FreeCAD: For Parametric Design

It starts with FreeCAD. I needed something that understood that dimensions change. That a hole might need to be 2mm wider, or a support beam 10mm taller. Parametric design is the key. It lets me build models that are adaptable, that can be tweaked and adjusted without starting from scratch. It’s the foundation for anything I want to eventually build.

Blender: For Rendering and Logic

Next, I bring the parts into Blender. It’s not just for making things look good, though it does that well. Blender is where I prepare the scene for the web. More importantly, it’s where I can attach logic to the models. Using custom properties, I can tag an object to define its physical behavior in the game engine. A platform can be marked as 'world' geometry, a trigger volume as a 'zone'. This is where a static model starts to become an interactive object.

This App: The Interactive Showcase

Finally, everything lands here, in this web app. It’s more than just a gallery. It’s a place where I can run the 3D scenes, where the physics I defined in Blender come to life. It's the portfolio I can show to clients, a living demonstration of what I can do, from design to code.

In Practice: The Marble Drop Demo

This little demo is a concrete example of the workflow. A ball appears at a spawn point, then gravity takes over. It tumbles down a series of platforms. Each platform's behavior is controlled by those custom properties I set in Blender. One might be a simple static platform, another might be a trigger that ends the game. It’s a simple concept, but it proves out the entire pipeline.

Next Steps

This is the start. With this workflow, I can quickly prototype and showcase ideas for interactive objects and installations. The next step is to use this for actual client work, to build things that people can touch and interact with, not just on a screen.