UPDATE: A new and improved version 3.0 is now available. See more details here.
I’ve posted some short videos here to show the speed and efficiency of the Building Creator extension. I also offer a free 30 day trial and would love to do a screen sharing demo for anyone interested.
You can download the extension here. http://download.3destimator.com/
My extension is used to rapidly design and visualize buildings.
This extension is now available for download.
Have you made any progress with this program? Unless you can make it do blueprints, accurate material take offs, labor calculations down to the connection and customizable dimensions to include offset truss designs, I wouldn’t be a buyer. Post frame manager has been out a long time, costs $2800, and does all of those things except the customized and offset designs. Furthermore, all your design does is a picture and most major pole barn companies have online software to give you a price and basic rendition of a building. I’m not knocking it or your price, just comparing.
With that all said, I am in dire need of a fully customizeable program that allows me to build the way I want to. I need to be able to go into the program and set up the parameters that remember my material selections. It must also allow me to individually select and size walls for bank barns, 1/2 foundation walls, scissor, attic, standard, cantilever and offset trusses.
What’s it going to take because the market is much larger than you think.
I actually own two licenses of Post Frame Manager. Prior to that I used Construction Maestro. The reason I started with the graphical drawing part first is because other software does not do nice 3d renderings.
For me neither Construction Maestro nor Post Frame Manager’s 3D renderings were acceptable. Also Building Creator allows me to design a building much faster while drawing it instantly as changes are made.
Post Frame Manager renderings:
Construction Maestro renderings:
At this time my program is not claiming to be an estimating program but the pictures definitely sell buildings. I own a lumber yard as well as a construction company with four crews. I can tell you with certainty that my salesmen use Building Creator every day. They tell me they couldn’t do their job without Building Creator.
I hope to some day create a solution that does estimating & blue prints, but as you mentioned it’s a tremendous amount of work. I have done enough of the ground work to say that when I do complete a solution it will be state of the art. It also will be a separate program from Building Creator, and will have it’s own 3D graphics built-in, so it won’t rely on SketchUp at all. Of course it will also be worth significantly more than $1000 at that point.
This might interest you, although I’m not anywhere near to a release yet.
Meet me at the NFBA show in Louisville next March, and see for your self. (I do not plan to have my release by then, but will have a booth)
This is one of my renderings from Post-Frame Manager. This did involve some Paint work, but that’s not really the issue. I spent a ton of time tweaking PFM to work for me. This included creating whole data sets to run pig-trough type overhead door headers that were actually longer than the opening. Obviously by the picture you can’t tell this is really a bank barn with 3/4 foundation walls and the “3rd floor” is really an offset truss design with a 9/12, 4/12. From the other side, it looks like a 1 story but the material list for this took 2 days. I need to speed that process along and technology is the answer.
As of right now, learning sketchup over the last week and 1/2 I’ve made some decent progress but modeling is just tedious because I’m still learning. Do you think perhaps you could continue with sketchup and use another BOM/Labor extension? Might be a quicker way to develop. How far along is your sketchup modeling? I think it should be fairly easy to hide the skin and develop the framing behind it. From there it’s just a BOM. I’m no programmer but what can I do to help? I could model a ton of framing for you.
I’m not going to Louisville, I will make the next Ohio one if I can.
With Building Creator I drew this in under 5 minutes. (It would be awesome to have a material list and plans but that’s an other story)
Give me a call I would be happy to chat with you. 419 631 7669
I’m continuing to use Building Creator for designing and sales, but I’m currently not working on adding estimating features, because Smart Build has been released by KeyMark, and it appears to meet our needs.
