Ok, first things first - no worries I’m not after some tricky CAD/CAM features . I’m rather looking for some simple add-ons that would allow artists to prepare manufacturable models easily, especially for hard plastic injection molding.
In a minimal option that would require a draft angle analysis to be displayed thus the artist would see whether a given part would eject from the mould, would allow to identify undercuts in the model.
Direction of the draft could be given either by specifying a plane or by drawing a line that would indicate direction of the draft.
Here’s a sample draft analysis I did in Rhino:
Of course it would need to displayed better , so the edit could be done while displaying draft. In fact only undercut areas could be marked.
This feature would IMO be a killer and would bring lots of new customers from various industries to Zbrush.
We’ve been using Zbrush to create small sf/fantasy models that then get 3d printed and reproduced in resin or metal. It really changed the way we work. So far it haven’t been a big issue - resin and metal are poured into flexible molds so undrecuts are possible. But as I’ve been looking to make some parts in bigger quantities it became a pain - steel moulds used in plastic injection moulding allow almost no undercuts. And got to admit that swapping models between software that can detect undercuts (but do not allow to modify models easily) and zbrush is not a viable solution.
The only software that I found that allows such options for the artist is Sensable Freeform - but the price of the haptic/software deal makes it totally out of the league for smaller workshops.
Heck, to be honest with some additional features like split lines, parting surface creation , core/cavity generation it could make an awesome paid add-on.