Solidean Blender Addon with Live Preview
A drop-in Blender addon bringing Solidean's exact, robust mesh booleans into Blender.
We've published a Blender addon that brings Solidean's exact mesh Booleans directly into Blender: Solidean Blender Addon.
The addon is a drop-in zip you install from Blender's addon manager. It bundles the Solidean Community Edition binary alongside a thin Python bridge, so you can start using exact Booleans on your meshes without compiling anything.
Available Downloads
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Prebuilt addon zip. A single cross-platform zip containing the addon plus the Solidean Community Edition binary for Linux and Windows. Download and install via Blender's addon manager.
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Source repository. Full bridge code under MIT license on GitHub. Requires Blender and a Solidean binary (e.g. the Community Edition) installed separately.
What It Shows
- Exact Boolean operations on Blender meshes
- Live updates as you move operands around: near-realtime for not-too-large meshes
- A minimal-footprint addon: drop-in zip, no compilation required
Live, Single-Shot Booleans
This first release focuses on single-shot Booleans with a live update: drag an operand around and the result re-evaluates on the fly. For not-too-large meshes that already feels close to realtime, even though a fair amount of overhead still goes into Blender's mesh reimport on every update.
The result is the kind of immediate, "what you see is what you get" interaction that exact Booleans usually don't get associated with. No retries, no failed evaluations to babysit, no degenerate output to clean up after: every parameter you scrub through lands as a clean, valid mesh. That property is a direct consequence of Solidean's exact kernel.
Integration Notes
The addon is structured in two layers:
- A small MIT-licensed Python bridge that handles Blender mesh I/O, operator registration, and calling into the native library.
- The Solidean Community Edition binary, shipped as
.dll,.so, and.dylibso a single zip works on all three desktop platforms.
The prebuilt zip contains both layers and requires no compilation. Building from source needs Blender's Python and a Solidean binary obtained separately.
Licensing
The bridge code is MIT-licensed and developed in the open at solidean-blender-addon.
The bundled Solidean binary is governed by the Solidean Community License, which is free for research, evaluation, prototyping, and other non-commercial use. Commercial operation requires a separate license.
This is the same arrangement we use for the Hello Godot demo: open bridge code, generous community license on the kernel for non-commercial users.
Scope & Next Steps
The current release focuses on getting exact, robust Booleans into a real Blender workflow with as little friction as possible. Planned follow-ups include:
- More operations and operator modes exposed to Blender
- Better progress reporting and cancellation for heavy meshes
- Performance work on the Blender-side mesh exchange
The goal is the same as for the Godot integration: show that exact, robust mesh Booleans can sit comfortably inside the tools artists and engineers already use.