Blender has no shortage of add-ons for making a scene look good. Ichno is for the less glamorous job that comes after: turning a finished model into a drawing someone can actually build from. It’s a free add-on, published on extensions.blender.org with source on GitHub, that generates technical drawings from a Blender scene in one click.
What it actually produces
Run it and Ichno outputs orthographic and isometric views of the scene with both overall and chain dimensions marked, a title block (logo, revision history, custom fields), and an auto-generated bill of materials — the stuff a furniture maker, product designer or CNC/3D-printing shop actually needs on a cut sheet, not just a nice-looking render. Output is multi-page vector PDF or SVG, with support for splitting a drawing into one sheet per collection, first- or third-angle projection, and metric or imperial units.
The clever part is how it avoids touching your working file: Ichno runs a second, background instance of Blender on a copy of the scene, generates the drawing there, and leaves your actual open file untouched. One click, no manual camera setup, no risk of accidentally nudging geometry while you’re trying to document it.
Where it fits
This sits in the same general territory as NitroRetopo, PocketCam and the wave of recent Blender add-ons aimed at production pipeline problems rather than new rendering tricks — the unglamorous steps between “I made a 3D model” and “someone else can fabricate or build from this.” For makers already using Blender for design work before sending files to a laser cutter or CNC, Ichno removes a step that otherwise meant exporting to a separate CAD or drafting tool just to generate dimensioned plans.