AngelSTEP 2.0: a rebuilt meshing engine

The fastest STEP importer for Blender got faster again, and its meshes now look as clean as dedicated CAD-prep tools while staying watertight.

NEW

- Structured AngelFLOW grids: rounds, fillets, threads and freeform faces get regular quad rows that run straight into the neighbouring faces. About half the triangles of 1.8 at the same resolution.

- Clean corners and caps: rounded box corners and domed caps fan neatly into their tip instead of a dense triangle cluster.

- Holed cylinders and cones (cross holes, slots in sleeves) are now meshed properly instead of falling back to raw triangulation.

- Truer shading: every quad is split along the diagonal the mesher checked, so curved surfaces render smoother at the same polygon count.

- Even faster imports: a new parallel STEP reader and better multi-threading make imports 2.4× faster on average (aircraft assembly 43.6 → 17.3 s, engine assembly 19.2 → 9.7 s, F1 car 6.9 → 2.5 s, caches cleared).

- Live re-tessellation runs in the background: keep working while a progress bar fills on the new Triangles line in the part panel.

CHANGED

- Collapse Flat Faces is now off by default (it made flat areas look jagged). The option is still there if you want it.

FIXED

- Inverted normals on open sheet bodies and on thread run-outs.

- Holes in curved faces with Heal off; full cones from some CAD systems coming out empty.

- Rounds at fine resolutions that fell back to raw triangles.

- Several import hangs on difficult files.

Upgrading from 1.x: remove the old version in the add-on preferences, restart Blender, then install 2.0. Free for existing customers.

What's new in 1.8

Fused supplier CAD becomes a usable assembly — and materials arrive with their real names. Driven directly by customer feedback.

• Explode to Bodies: split a fused part — one STEP product that really holds several separate solids — into one object per body, each meshed separately and each keeping its live CAD link. The panel shows how many bodies a part contains before you commit.
• Explode Selected Parts: do it for a whole selection at once, for assemblies where fused parts are the rule rather than the exception.
• Exploded bodies export as a real STEP assembly: separate products in one file, instead of the lump you were sent.
• Materials keep their CAD names: Steel - Satin, ABS (White), Plastic - Matte (Black) — and re-importing the same file reuses them instead of creating duplicates.
• Body names from the file: where the CAD names its solids, your objects use those names.
• Fix: parts whose colours sit on their individual bodies imported with no material at all.

What's new in 1.7

Your work survives every re-tessellation — plus meshes inside STEP. Driven directly by customer feedback.

• Export plain Blender meshes to STEP: normal mesh objects export alongside true-BREP CAD parts into one STEP file, as AP242 tessellated mesh bodies — and re-import cleanly, clearly labelled as mesh objects.
• Lock Part: a padlock protects fine-tuned parts from every accidental change — Live Change, batch re-tess, defeaturing edits and UV rebuilds all skip locked parts.
• Origins survive re-tessellation: move a part's origin — Blender's own Set Origin included — and it stays exactly where you put it through every rebuild.
• Center Origins on Parts: one click puts every selected part's origin at its geometry center, re-tess-proof — exploded views without the jump-back.
• Move Assembly to World Origin: one click brings far-from-origin CAD data home, permanently.
• Create UVs on Selected: patch UVs and seams for a whole selection in one go, without touching the geometry.
• Sever Live Link: disconnect an object from its CAD file for good when you want a plain mesh.

What's new in 1.7

Your work survives every re-tessellation — plus meshes inside STEP. Driven directly by customer feedback.

• Export plain Blender meshes to STEP: normal mesh objects export alongside true-BREP CAD parts into one STEP file, as AP242 tessellated mesh bodies — and re-import cleanly, clearly labelled as mesh objects.
• Lock Part: a padlock protects fine-tuned parts from every accidental change — Live Change, batch re-tess, defeaturing edits and UV rebuilds all skip locked parts.
• Origins survive re-tessellation: move a part's origin — Blender's own Set Origin included — and it stays exactly where you put it through every rebuild.
• Center Origins on Parts: one click puts every selected part's origin at its geometry center, re-tess-proof — exploded views without the jump-back.
• Move Assembly to World Origin: one click brings far-from-origin CAD data home, permanently.
• Create UVs on Selected: patch UVs and seams for a whole selection in one go, without touching the geometry.
• Sever Live Link: disconnect an object from its CAD file for good when you want a plain mesh.

What's new in 1.7

Your work survives every re-tessellation — plus meshes inside STEP. Driven directly by customer feedback.

• Export plain Blender meshes to STEP: normal mesh objects export alongside true-BREP CAD parts into one STEP file, as AP242 tessellated mesh bodies — and re-import cleanly, clearly labelled as mesh objects.
• Lock Part: a padlock protects fine-tuned parts from every accidental change — Live Change, batch re-tess, defeaturing edits and UV rebuilds all skip locked parts.
• Origins survive re-tessellation: move a part's origin — Blender's own Set Origin included — and it stays exactly where you put it through every rebuild.
• Center Origins on Parts: one click puts every selected part's origin at its geometry center, re-tess-proof — exploded views without the jump-back.
• Move Assembly to World Origin: one click brings far-from-origin CAD data home, permanently.
• Create UVs on Selected: patch UVs and seams for a whole selection in one go, without touching the geometry.
• Sever Live Link: disconnect an object from its CAD file for good when you want a plain mesh.