2 quick blender questions.

Judge Death.

1. can i default blender to use CUDA? Every time I start it I end up having to manually start cuda or it renders with the CPU. Slow!

2. let's say I make a circle, then scale it along am axis to make a oval. Say I scale a circle along the x axis by like half to make a long oval to be specific.

Now, let's say I need to extrude the edge outward or inward, doesn't matter. I'm extruding an oval. Now the issue is that when I extrude it and then, say, try to make a groove along the edge my groove will wide at the long ends that it would be at the sides. Is there any way to extrude is to a groove would be evenly wide along the whole perimeter?

McC

1. Yep! The trick is to do this in your startup file (i.e. the file that opens when Blender starts and you haven't loaded any other files; just click past the splash screen and you'll be in it) and then "Save User Preferences" after having done so. All of Blender's initial settings are actually stored in this file. It's one of those little quirks about Blender that seems counter-intuitive. The same is true for add-ons; if you want an add-on to stay enabled, you have to do it in this startup file and then save your preferences.

2. I'm not quite sure I understand the exact problem (remember, a picture is worth a thousand words, so post screenshots! ), but there are two things that could be at play here.

First, all of Blender's mesh operations are affected by the object scale. If, after making your circle and then scaling it, you have Scale Transforms, this means any operation like Shrink/Fatten, or Inset Faces, is going to take whatever value you input and multiply by the Scale Transform values. The result in this case is a fatter groove along the X axis and a narrower one along the Y. To fix this, go to Object Mode and hit Ctrl A to Apply Transforms, and choose Scale. That will apply the current Transforms to the underlying mesh (so that they're no longer at the Object level) and revert the Object scale values to 1.0.

Second, when you're scaling a non-uniform shape, you will inevitably get non-uniform results, even if you've applied your transforms. Using just Scale, you'll need different X and Y scale values. To get around this, try using the Shrink/Fatten tool to manipulate the shape.


Click to enlarge

Judge Death.

image3f_zpsc7455f13.png

The sensor track along the top is quite wider ad the points than the sides. I hope I can fix this using your idea without redoing the whole thing.