Gross height is not the most commonly used by architects, especially at the concept stage, as that relates to heights between slabs and not heights between finishing materials. It excludes floor finishings. I think it’s more important to pick finishings levels than structural/slab levels. In the image you show, what we would need would be the 0.00 height level and the 3.60 height level, instad of the -0.10 and 3.50.
Also, what I feel we miss in your plugin is ceiling height, which is important to know and there is no place for it in the UI, so we won’t be able to retrieve this important information, for permits and construction documentation.
In IFC terms, ceiling height isa Definition of IFCSpace called Clearheight. In sketchup people have to model this clear height all the time, as it’s what we see in the end, even if the slabs might not be modeled, the floor finishings and ceiling finishings will be, most of the times.
What I was also stating is that I feel that, for the sake of the plugin, having levels and floor height is redundant information.
For example:
If you’d pick all levels you could retrieve floor heights,
if you introduce first level and then all heights you can get floor levels (as it’s done right now)
Both methods lead to the same info, but user should be able to choose the best approach to reach the same information.
I feel it’s simpler to deal with levels than total floor height. Total height would then be extracted automatically from picking levels. That would be the easier way of doing it in Sketchup at least for me as we would only have to pick the finishing level of a floor, instead of measuring the floor height and introduce the value.
You miss understood my answer. I’m talking about Storey 's height, not the Storey 's level.
In my extension, you just need enter the first level compare to the ground level and then enter storeys 's height, after that all levels will be automatically caculated. The level in common is Finishing Floor Level.
Gross Height can be measured from the level of this finishing floor to the level of the next finishing floor, or from slab to slab like the IFC image.
For what I understood up until now, the plugin relies on the model to be organized in a specific Tag system for it to work with all functionality.
Is this so?
I have several questions in this regard:
Can I customize the tags that are the basis of the plugin, or do I have to stick with the tag names that the plugin uses?
Where/how can I see the full list of tags?
Some of these tags are auto generated. If I change their names will all functions of the plugin still work?
Is this why there is an 5D+ Auto Tag plugin too?
There is a match between tags and IFC classifications for IFC export. Is this right?
If this is right, where can I have info on which tags will match to which IFC classifications?
There is also a peculiar Tag system for materials applied to groups/components and IFC materials. Why would we have to use the tag system to tag materials if we already use the bucket tool for doing that? Can’t the plugin retrieve group/component material and assign it to IFC classifications?
When I import a DWG drawing into my Model, for instance an engineering model, they have their own set of layers/tags, which are very randomly organized. As it is right now, is there a specific way of organizing this kind of tags?
Last question, and maybe the most important is the manual:
The manual isn’t clear about the concept behind the plugin. I understand there are several auto functions, but for them to work perfectly it looks like the model has to be organized in a particular way in relation to tags.
Could this be described better, please, so we can clearly know how the VBO workflow really works and understand how to adapt our own workflows to it?
At this point, this might be the biggest question. I can’t easily understand what this is really about and how to deal with it and I’m not liking how a lot of automatically generated layers are affecting how my model organization.
If I understood everything clearly and if I could customize the process a bit more, I’d be really happy as I think this plugin would be incredibly useful.
Currently, except tags were auto created by the extension, such as “LEVEL” (for exporting IFC), “VboScenes”, “!label” and “!dimension” (for grouping labels each scene). You don’t need to stick with the default tag names.
You can see the full list of tags from 5D+ Auto Tag and reading this file about VBO Classes 02. vbo_sketchup_tag (en).pdf (1.1 MB)
VBO use object was tagged by material tags to create hatches by tags.
For example, your tag’s name just need included characters from left side, then it can auto mappings to the IFC classes in the right side (no need exact name). Currently you cannot edit/customise this rules. But the customization for mapping tags to IFC will come later.
Currently, there is no official way in my extensions, but you can use a function in 5D+ Auto VBO to do that. You can go to the folder “assets” in my plugins (inside SketchUp plugins folders), edit the file “convert_tags.csv” (look like this)
I 'll try to make the manual more friendly to the user. And the extension first for user who understand how VBO Workflow works, but now it’s aimed to develope for all workflows, even for the model without any tags.
To understand how VBO workflows works, you can read the lesson about “vbo_sketchup_tags” I attached above.
If you have a good, organized tags system, it can do many things automatically, but if not, it still works with selection, so let select something first.
It would be great if even those could be customized.
Is it possible that, in the future, VBO reads materials applied to groups/components and adds them to the IFC element material description?
Are those hatches you’re talking about, Curic’s Section hatches?
That would be great!
If Sketchup already has a Classification tool, why did you feel the need to leverage the Tagging system to classify? Is it because it’s more usual that people use tags to organize the model?
Then it’s also more usual that people use materials from the bucket tool, so maybe the request above makes sense, and we wouldn’t use Tags for Materials, only materials for materials and tags for tags and classification.
Have you thought of using Sketchup Classification system to classify objects as IFC and that would automatically send them to the corresponding tag?
In this file, tags containing the words in the left will auto convert or be sent to the tags in the right list?
SketchUp user uses tag not only to organize the model, but also for present. It helps control visibility for each scene and control linewidth for each tag in LayOut, which Classification tool can’t.
The material from bucket tool just for the surface, not the whole object. The materials tags in VBO Classes are for object itself. It’s like a plywood with veneer or painted. Itself is wooden, but one of surfaces can be cover by a black paint, other surfaces cover by white paint. In this situation, surface can use paint bucket to “paint material” but it will be tagged to “m_wood” (wooden material), then hatches of section will be displayed as a wood object.
From the reason an object can be painted many materials in many surfaces, we don’t want to attach the materials applied to the object as IfcMaterial.
Not everyone uses SketchUp to do BIM, so they often use tags to classify objects for organize the model and presentation. So, we should map from tags to IFC, instead from IFC to tags.
Paint Bucket can apply materials to objects like groups and components. These materials can then be overriden by the faces that have been painted directly. It’s a very convenient method that works well and is also compatible with all render engines.
Having to tag materials, when we have already painted the model, seems like double amount of work.
So, for what I understood, custom boundary limits the grids to that boundary, so we can focus on larger scale/partial views of the model while clipping mask draws a plane to focus the scene into a a part of the model. Right?
I haven’t had the time to fully explore the plugin, but I’ve seen that it creates a lot of scenes for each plan, elevation or section view. Is there a way of exporting this collection of scenes to Layout in a single go in the correct order and populate pages with the right viewports juxtaposed in the right way, or this is something that must be done manually?
I am trying this plugin right now. But I get the this Plan view. Which my Section Lines are not in the right layer. But my projection lines are in the right layer. Is that because I am not using Curic Section?
We are pleased to announce an important update regarding our product. After careful consideration and feedback from our user community, we have decided to rename our product from “5D+ Auto VBO” to “5D+ Plus.” This change aims to create a more memorable brand name that better reflects the comprehensive and enhanced nature of the product. “5D+ Plus” is not just a SketchUp plugin but a powerful tool that automates tasks in the technical drawing creation process, making your work faster and more efficient. We believe this change will provide a better user experience and help the product continue to grow strongly in the future.
Additionally, this update not only supports four more languages besides English, including Thai, Portuguese (Brazil), Chinese, and Vietnamese, but also introduces many exciting upgrades such as “Custom Bound” and “Clipping Mask” for you to explore. For detailed information, please refer to the “Release Note” here: Dropbox Paper
