by Keep Making·Modeling
Images © Keep Making. Used for product review; image policy.
Precision Gears earns its spot in the superhive library for the sheer breadth of gear types on offer, from spur and helical to worm, bevel, and GT2, paired with a procedural rigging system for animated chains. It sits at rank 433 on superhive. Worth knowing: the addon is openly described as an evolving, open beta project, with a wiki and videos planned, so expect ongoing changes.
Precision Gears is a Blender addon from Keep Making that brings an array of mathematically accurate involute gears to Blender. Everything sits inside the closest thing to a faux parametric system, so gears can be changed on the fly. The library spans spur, helical, herringbone, rack, internal, internal helical, internal herringbone, bevel, spiral bevel, worm, GT2, and crown gears.
Beyond the gears themselves, the addon adds bore options including center extrusions, set screws, cross bore, round subtractive and additive bores, and polygon bores, all with bore previews. Tooth detailing covers chamfering, crowning, flank relief, undercut, and rounded tips, while pre-creased edges provide subdivision support. Material assignments are kept when parameters change.
A procedural gear rigging system builds parametric, animated gear chains. It's instance-based, which the developer notes makes it fast and lets you edit gears with modifiers. Gear presets with thumbnails, preset creation, and global scaling are included. Precision Gears requires Blender 3.5 as a minimum and is described as an evolving, open beta project.
Precision Gears is best for modeling and animating mathematically accurate involute gears in Blender, including parametric gear chains.
Precision Gears is completely free to download and use.
Precision Gears runs on Blender 4.0, 3.6, and 3.5, with 3.5 listed as the minimum supported version. Those are the releases covered here if you work across multiple Blender installations. The addon is described as forever evolving and in an open beta state, so behaviour may shift as development continues. For the current version list and any newer compatibility, check the developer's page before installing on a specific Blender build.
Precision Gears wraps its gears in the closest thing to a faux parametric system, so you can change your gears on the fly after they've been created. The Toothy update also keeps material assignments intact when you adjust parameters, so tweaking a gear doesn't reset the materials you've applied. Preset creation and global scaling round out the parametric controls, and pre-creased edges add subdivision support. For deeper setup details, refer to the developer's page.
Precision Gears includes a procedural gear rigging system for building parametric gear chains that are animated. The rigging is instance-based, which the developer notes makes it fast and lets you use modifiers to edit gears. This arrived with the Rigging update, alongside GT2 gears, crown gears, improved worm gears, and improved UV unwrapping. Gear presets with thumbnails and a preset application system were added in the same update. For setup details, refer to the developer's page.
Precision Gears offers a reduced-feature lite version so you can evaluate how the addon works before committing. It's listed as free in this catalog, though the developer distributes it under a GPL license, so check the developer's page for current licensing and download options. The addon is in an open beta and described as continually evolving, with a wiki and instructional videos planned. Bug reports and development ideas can be shared through the maker's community channels.
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