i was curious to know if there is an extension that would allow you to select a material(that has a given density) for a part you made, then calculate the mass of said part from the volume and density that was with the assigned material?
I know i can look up density charts in my book and google then manually calculate the mass, just wondering if there is a cool extension that would do this.
IE, it has a lot of built in materials with assigned densities. So if i picked a plastic or a cold rolled carbon steel, it would take associated density , multiply it by the volume of the part and then give a mass.
second, can all parts be solids and have volume? because i swear not every 3d part can be a solid.
My truss calculator (not a SketchUp Plugin) uses a very interesting equation in order to calculate the weight of the wood truss members (see the AWC NDS for details). The density is determined by moisture content so it is somewhat variable. Steel and plastic are much more static in that regard.
Yup. When i was in my strengths of materials class and lab, we had to figure out densities of these wood beams, then the modulous and other ratios as well. Then we would put them in a machine and compress them until they snapped. Pretty fun lab.
if i knew any programming language, which i do not, i would make this plugin. I think it would be a great extension.
I have used the center of gravity extension which will provide me a mass if i give it a density, but if i dont remember what has the given density when i open the part a month later, i will be lost haha.
What would be cool to, once the material is picked in the extension, it would apply a covering to the part to look like steel or brass. I do know we have the materials options to paint our object, just have that activated when we apply automatically when we use the mass extension. Just an idea. Not sure if there is a demand for this, but i would sure use it. especially for PLA 3d printing. It could tell me the mass of my object in grams, then i could calculate printing costs
A dynamic component yousay? Hmm, have not even looked into those features yet.
If i provided a list of associated densities for specific common materials, i could use a dynamic component to calculate the mass of an object based off its volume? Do i have to supply typed input or can it simply be select the part, open the dynamic component, select the material i want and then hit calculate and it will grab volume from entity info?
Yes, i have tried center of gravity plugin:) the only issue is i have to supply it a density, which is fine, but if i forget the 7900kg/m3 is aisi 1020 steel, then its more hasle than needed.
So… how might such a tool ‘know’ what the particular density [property] of 1020-steel is ?
And how might it spot that some particular entity has that ‘property’ ?
I can see how it might be done…
e.g. density attributes assigned to entities from look-up tables of materials…
But it’s not a very simple process…
Im not a programmer, but i would say that you would have a database or excel file or cvs file or some file that has something like this:
AISI 1020 steel, 7900kg/m3,
H20, 1000kg/m3
Then somehow the plugin would just take the volume info from the solid and multiply it to the density in the table. Now the part doesnt have to hold or save any info, because if we wanted to change the material from steel to plastic for 3d printing, the extension would just calculate the mass off of a selected material and the selected components volume.
How i see it working. I click on my solid so it is highlighted, right click, select mass properties, then this opens a new window box(sort of like export stl), then there is a drop down or callapsable menu with all sorts of materials. There is a second box that has the selected parts volume(pulled from entity info) then a 3rd box that is empty where it will display the mass in grams. Once i select a material, it will multiply its density by box 2, and display the results. Sketchup doesnt need to save the info.
Basically the center of gravity extension but instead of searching for my density and just inputting a number, you select a material that is linked to a database or file with asociated density.
i am no programmer but i did make a simple excel sheet that has a bunch of materials and densities listed. it also calculates the mass if given a volume.
It has a drop down menu for the material calculator that is placed to the right side of the list of materials. its a simple calculator and still a work in progress but hey, its kind of cool. Mass calculator final.zip (10.8 KB)