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July 18, 2012

Blender 2.6x igs importer

At the moment it only deals with line type 126 (which is BSpline). It can be downloaded here: blender_version_igs_import.py. Warning: only deals with entity type 126.


(model credit: siggraphSpacecraft48.igs -- i have no idea who made it.


At the moment the igs importer probably doesn't do much good beyond importing BSplines. But it happens to do a remarkable job at importing .igs files from
http://www.dgp.toronto.edu/~shbae/ilovesketch.htm, which is why i wrote it.

Behind the scenes

After staring at the .igs files for a while some patterns emerged. It became clear that a relatively uncomplicated extraction pattern would probably suffice to get things started. Without reading through the official file specs i tend to write code for whatever gets flinged my way, until a meta pattern emerges and then things become more sophisticated. Right now the code is procedural, and easily lets me implement new entities as they occur.

After several hours manual labour

I manage to squeeze this one out. Blender has NURBS surfaces but the interface for NURBS specifically is very weak and probably hasn't changed much in the past 4 years. Anyway. here it is (model 83 from the iLOVESKETCH page:
some more hours.