I have used Blender for many years. When I find that it is missing a certain functionality, I am writing a plugin that provides this feature. Some of them are no longer needed, because in the later releases their functionality was added to the standard program. This page shows the tools I have found useful for the current Blender version (2.8), as well as for the previous one (2.7).
If you do not know how to install a Blender add-on, here is a description how to add them to your Blender environment.
At this moment I do not use any special GIMP or Inkscape add-ons.
Calculates the intersection of two selected meshes. Connects its points, as the vertices into new edge, and places this result into active object’s mesh. They form a new vertex loop, accessible in the Edit mode. Click here, or on the picture, to read more or download object_intersection.py file.
Part of the popular Geom Tools utilites, ported to Blender 2.5, and then to Blender 2.8. Click here, or on the picture, to read more or download mesh_vertex_tools.py file.
A solution for easy controlling the undercarriage, control surfaces, and other movable parts in an airplane model. Click here, or on the picture, to read more about it.
Useful utilities for setting a high-resolution photo as a reference image. (This photo is set as the background image of an auxiliary camera. I call it "reference camera"). Click here, or on the picture, to read more about it.
If you would like to write your own Blender scripts – I recommend an Open Source solution, based on popular Eclipse editor, with PyDev extension. It has autocompletion feature for all Blender API classes, and an remote, GUI-based debugger. It can trace even the Blender add-ons! I wrote a book about programming add-ons for Blender, with Eclipse.
Many years ago, in 2007, I wrote a tutorial about SPE and Winpdb, used as IDE for Blender 2.4x. Currently, both of these old tools does not support Python 3.x, which was used in further Blener versions (2.5, 2.6, 2.7, ...). Thus in 2011 I had to propose a new solution for the new Blender releases. In 2019 I published a new, revised version of this guide, for Blender 2.8.
Finally, here you will find some deprecated older materials for the previous Blender versions (2.4, 2.5, ...).