Create a bill of materials with SU2XL: your feedback

[Wisext]

Hello,

SU2XL is a data exchange tool between SketchUp and a spreadsheet. It is a tool that offers more features than SketchUp’s Generate Report:

• All elements of the model can be exported (edges, surfaces, groups) and not only the components.

• It allows to add custom attributes that precisely characterize your exported elements.

• You can specify the exact export format of the .csv file. Under Windows the extension can directly open an Excel file where the data will be written.

• The data exchange is two-way: data changes written in a spreadsheet can also be reflected in SketchUp.

SU2XL has been available for several years for free on the Extension Warehouse: Extension | SketchUp Extension Warehouse

This extension has been recently upgraded with an attribute manager that allows to dynamically manage the attributes tagging the entities. Attribute Manager in SketchUp - YouTube

This video explains an example of calculation of the heating power using SU2XL: Calculate the heating power with SketchUp - YouTube

You will find more explanation on the site: www.wisext.com

The purpose of this post is to start a communication with the users. Feel free to give me your feedback and to report bugs. A list of features that should be implemented in the future and a list of identified bugs are available here:

• Future features - Wisext
• Bugs - Wisext

[Wisext]

19 May 2022: Version 0.600.2 of the SU2XL extension has been released. You can now export your data to Excel as a table by specifying the table name in the export parameters. Don’t want a table format? Simply leave this field empty.

[TheOnlyAaron]

I saw this pop up in the forum and saw that there is not much feedback happening. I figured I might be able to give you a few cents worth of free advice (please feel free to ignore).

After reading both posts, I am still not quite sure what your extension actually does. You might get more feedback from users of these forum if you were to explain the value of using this extension or workflows that could be aided. To that point, the name of the extension and title of this post don’t do much to entice people to come check out what you have going on. I am only making suggestions in the hopes that you get some good interaction and feedback, but a little more info could go a long way.

As I said, this was unsolicited advice, so please feel free to ignore it!

[pupoksveta]

I have to agree with @TheOnlyAaron .
I wanted to try your extension but didn’t know how to use it. I would appreciate better tutorial for it.
I sought the tuts of yours but it was kind of too fast and just music back round. I did not find it very useful for me. But i would love to have a closer look and use of su2xl. Looks very use full.

[Wisext]

Hi Aaron, Hi Miroslav,

I put a like to your reactions. It is not to please for free. Your reactions are of great value, by their content and also their courtesy. And no, @TheOnlyAaron, I’m certainly not going to ignore it!).
If my extension is still in beta version, you confirm that my communication is in alpha.

I’m taking your suggestions into account. The title of the post should at least be something like “Create a Bill of Materials with SU2XL: your feedback”. I should probably also insist in my presentation on the notion of bill of materials or quantity survey, which is the main idea of the extension.

@Pupoksveta: message well received, I have to create a tutorial for those who use the extension for the first time, in a didactic mode. Note that there are also explanations in the form of a mix of text and image on my site: SU2XL - Wisext and Attribute Manager - Wisext. But I admit that I have to improve them.

For a future version, I was also thinking about simplifying the toolbars and commands to make it easier to use the first time (and after). And maybe a new and more meaningful name for the extension (Report++ or something like that). But that’s another thread.

[DanRathbun]

@Wisext

The title of the post should at least be something like “ Create a Bill of Materials with SU2XL: your feedback ” . I should probably also insist in my presentation on the notion of bill of materials or quantity survey , which is the main idea of the extension.

You can edit the initial post (presentation) at any time. Also only you can change the topic title by going into post edit mode for the initial post. When in the edit mode, a pencil icon will appear to the right of the topic title which allows you to edit the title.

[Wisext]

Thank you Dan for your practical explanation. I made some modifications in the topic title and the initial post.

[Wisext]

Following the previous discussion, a redesign of the extension and a tutorial are in preparation.

But before that, I had to fix a major bug on MacOS. Although I tested the extension on a Mac, a bug prevented the extension to work when distributed in encrypted form. I hope that this problem is solved in the new version 0.601.5 that has just been released: Extension | SketchUp Extension Warehouse.

After installing the Extension Warehouse, you should see 2 toolbars. In the Extensions menu, a Wisext submenu should also appear.

To Mac users: please let me know about any problems. Such a fatal bug unfortunately suggests that the extension is not developed for Mac and the user skips over to something else without informing me about the issue.

[florinapostoiu]

Hi there.!

Below is a list of all commands that exist in your extension, which are not available to the user. I also found nothing mentioned about them on your website or the entire internet.
Please tell me what I should do to have access to all those commands.!
Right now in fact I am interested only in one of them, for which Sketchup should have done something many years ago, but it seems you are smarter than Sketchup - Quick Group is the one that doesn’t require a Ph.D. for Sketchup to admit that is a missing wheel…!

Thank you very much.!

Wisext section options

Wattribute structure (!!)

Wattribute options

Extended Version - Get extended version for Wisext plugins (!!)

Quick Group - group all connected faces and edges that are not in a group, a fast way to create volumes

Volume Slicer (full version) - slice a volume by a plane

Volume Slicer - slice a volume by a plane

Daww section faces - for the current section plane

Draw all section faces - for all the section planes

Hide all section faces

Unhide all section faces

Previous section

Next section

Current section faces visible / invisible

GL visible - make visible global materials first

GN visible - make visible global materials only

LG visible - make visible local materials first

(L) LN visible - make visible local materials only

Recording material in current section group

Recording material for all sections

Applying selected face material to all sections

Select and move active section plane

Reverse the current section plane - and the linked section faces

Get entities

Testing user tool

Check face orientation

Export dynamic component options

Import Dynamic component options

Update

[DanRathbun]

@florinapostoiu

Quick Group is the one that doesn’t require a Ph.D. for Sketchup to admit that is a missing wheel…!

Triple-left-click one of the faces, then right-click and choose Make Group from the context menu. You can even speed this up by assigned a keychord shortcut to the Make Group command (I assigned ALT+G myself.)

[Wisext]

Hello,

I don’t give public access to all these commands that launch tools in alpha version. My priority is the development of SU2XL, which has recently become “Find And Report” (I will write a new post about it soon). However I answered your question about Quick Group here: Quick Group command, plus a folder path issue.! - #35 by Wisext .
I thank you for your interest in my work.