Fretwork - Parametric Architectural Panel & Screen Generator

Bill_3D in Modeling

Fretwork Generator — User Documentation
★ Official Documentation

Fretwork Generator

User Guide & Reference

Parametric screen generation, organic attractors, curved 3D surface projection, and CNC/laser vector exporting.

v1.0.0
Version
4.2 +
Blender
Belaid Ziane
Author
1

Installation & Setup

  1. In Blender, open Edit > Preferences > Add-ons.
  2. Click Install... in the top-right corner and select the downloaded fretwork.zip file.
  3. Enable the checkbox next to Mesh: Fretwork Generator.
  4. Press N in the 3D Viewport to open the sidebar, and navigate to the Fretwork tab.
2

Quick Start Workflow

1
Choose Your Source

Either deselect everything for a standalone rectangular panel, or select any flat/curved face in Edit Mode.

2
Live Preview Plane

Click Live Preview Plane. Adjust dimensions, gap, wave depth, or pick attractor empties live in real-time.

3
Apply & Finalize

Press Enter (or click Apply Panel) to construct the solid 3D mesh with automatic Shade Auto Smooth.

Best Practice: Working with Large Surfaces & High Tile Counts

When applying fretwork to very large surfaces (such as full building facades, stadiums, or surfaces requiring thousands of tiles):

  • Avoid starting Live Preview directly on massive surfaces: Real-time viewport re-triangulation of tens of thousands of tiles on every frame can slow down interactive responsiveness.
  • Recommended Workflow:
    1. Select a single small representative face or use a small standalone test panel to dial in your desired tile size, gap width, filleting, and wave amplitude with Live Preview.
    2. Once satisfied, exit preview (Esc).
    3. Select your full large surface / multi-face building mesh in Edit Mode.
    4. Click Create Panel directly (without starting live preview). The optimized Delaunay CDT engine will generate the full high-density production mesh instantly in a single fast pass.
3

Surface Geometries: Flat, N-Gons & Curved 3D Meshes

Fretwork Generator automatically detects the type of geometry you have selected:

▸ Standalone Rectangular Panels: Set Standalone Width, Height, and Border thickness directly in the UI panel.
▸ Arbitrary Flat N-Gons & Complex Outlines: Select any irregular face, triangular sign, or circular disk. Inner holes and cutout windows are preserved automatically.
▸ Curved 3D Meshes (Domes, Cylinders, Facades): Select faces on non-planar surfaces. The addon automatically performs conformal angle-based unwrapping, adds longitudinal relief seams to closed tubes, and deforms the pattern cleanly across the 3D curvature.
4

The 9 Parametric Pattern Engines

Voronoi
Voronoi
Islamic Star Girih
Islamic Star (Girih)
Mashrabiya
Mashrabiya Star
Hexagon
Hexagon
Perforated Circles
Perforated Circles
Triangles
Triangles
Triweave
Triweave
Continuous Lines
Continuous Lines
Grid and Brick
Grid & Brick
Voronoi: Organic cellular mesh with seed count, Lloyd relaxation iterations, and corner chamfer/fillet.
Islamic Star (Girih): Traditional Islamic tilework built from contact-angle ray propagation on square, hex, or triangular cells.
Islamic Star (Mashrabiya): N-pointed geometric star cutout lattices with sharpness and vertical/horizontal gap controls.
Hexagon (Honeycomb): Hexagonal grid with row offset stagger, corner radius, and random cutout skipping %.
Perforated Circles: Circular cutouts with aligned grid default and Row Offset slider for staggered 60° packing.
Triangles Lattice: Alternating isometric triangular grid with custom base width, height, and strut thickness.
Line Weave (Triweave): Three parallel line families crossing at 30°, 90°, and 150° with vertical offset control.
Continuous Lines / Slits: Parallel slits with cut width, alternate wave phase offsets, and longitudinal surface deformation.
Grid & Running Brick: Rectangular cutouts with corner radius and Row Offset (0.5 creates classic running bond brick).
5

Unified Wave & Scallop Deformers

Every pattern includes unified wave controls to instantly transform rigid lines into organic curves:

🌊 Wave Amplitude Activates sinusoidal raised-cosine scallops along every edge. Endpoints stay pinned for closed contours.
🔢 Waves Per Side Integer number of wave cycles per contour edge.
📐 Wave Resolution Sample segments per wave curve — higher = smoother curvature.
6

Interactive Point & Curve Attractors

Attractors let you modulate hole sizes dynamically across your surface using Blender objects in the 3D scene. Each attractor belongs exclusively to the panel it was created for — other panels in the scene are completely unaffected.

How to Add Attractors

Attractor controls only appear when a generated panel is selected or when Live Preview is active.

  1. Select your panel (or start Live Preview).
  2. In the Attractors section of the sidebar, click Pick Point or Pick Curve.
  3. Your cursor changes to an Eyedropper. A live name label appears next to the nearest compatible object as you move the mouse.
  4. Left-Click any highlighted Empty or Curve to assign it as an attractor. Press Esc or Right-Click to cancel.
Point Attractors (Empties)

Pick any Empty in the scene. Move or scale it in 3D space to smoothly shrink or grow nearby openings with Gaussian falloff radius and strength controls.

Curve Attractors (Bézier)

Pick any Curve object to create flowing rivers of opening gradients across the panel. Supports advanced Taper Profiles: Constant, Linear, Smooth, Pinch Center.

Auto-Parenting & Per-Panel Isolation
  • When you pick an attractor it is automatically parented to its panel — moving, rotating, or scaling the panel moves all its attractors with it automatically.
  • Each attractor is exclusive to one panel. Attractor A on Panel A will never affect Panel B.
  • The sidebar Attractors list only shows attractors belonging to the currently selected panel.
Attractor Parameters
Strength: How strongly tiles shrink at the attractor centre (0.0–1.0).
Radius: Influence radius in metres (or Start Radius for curve attractors).
Min Value: Minimum scale floor — tiles at the centre shrink down to this fraction, never to zero.
Invert: Tiles grow larger near the attractor instead of shrinking.
Taper Profile (curves only): Constant, Start→End, End→Start, or Center Pinch taper along the arc length.
Radius End (curves only): The influence radius at the end of the curve when Taper is active.
Point Radius — Alt+S (curves only): Multiply influence by each Bézier control point's individual radius for full manual control.
7

Non-Destructive In-Place Editing & Auto-Sync

Whenever you select an existing Fretwork panel in Object Mode, its stored parameters are automatically reloaded into the sidebar — no manual button click needed.

▸ Auto-Sync on Selection: Clicking on any generated panel instantly restores its pattern type, tile size, thickness, gap, wave settings, and all other parameters to the sidebar UI.
▸ Switching Patterns: Selecting a different pattern from the thumbnail grid always resets parameters to that pattern's defaults, giving you a clean starting point.
▸ Live Preview / Edit: Click Live Preview / Edit to re-enter interactive preview mode on an existing panel. The preview appears at the panel's current world position — even if you moved it after creation.
▸ Update Selected Panel: Applies the current sidebar settings directly to the selected panel mesh without entering preview mode.
▸ Create as New Panel: Creates a brand-new independent panel using the current settings while preserving the original.
Note: When Live Preview is active on a panel you have moved in Object Mode, the 2D edit overlay and the yellow dashed border both appear at the panel's actual world-space position — not its original creation position.
8

Direct Laser & CNC 2D SVG Exporter

Export clean 2D vector cut profiles directly from Blender with no external converters needed:

📐 Projection Alignment Select Auto (Panel Plane) to unroll 3D curved surfaces into flat cut sheets, or project along world axes.
📏 Units Choose Millimeters (mm), Inches (in), or Pixels (px) for 1:1 scale laser cut accuracy.
✂️ Cut Modes Laser (Hairline) emits thin 0.1mm cut strokes; Filled (Solid) emits filled black vector shapes.
💾 Export Path Set your target directory and filename, then click Export Panel to SVG.
9

Preset Manager & Visual Thumbnails

Save and organize your favorite panel designs. Presets automatically render high-resolution thumbnail icons inside the Blender UI for fast visual selection.

▸ Click Save Preset in the Pattern section to capture the current settings.
▸ Saved presets appear in the thumbnail grid alongside the built-in pattern types.
▸ Click Delete Preset to remove a saved preset from the grid.
▸ Selecting a preset from the picker automatically loads all its stored parameters into the sidebar.

Need Help or Have Feature Requests?

Contact developer support through the Blender Market product inbox. All updates and pattern expansions are included free with your purchase.

$19

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Details
Blender Extension Compatible Yes
Published about 2 months ago
Blender Version 4.2 - 5.2
Extension Type Add-on
License GPL

Bill_3D

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