Is there a plugin for calculating livable square feet?
What’s the definition of “livable”?
How would you put that into a plugin?
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Not including attached garage.
I was pretty sure it would be a long shot, but it doesn’t hurt to ask.
By what means would a plugin determine that a random face (ok, let’s say a horizontal one) needs to be counted as livable area or not? A face could be part of the ceiling, or an internal face, or of a wall/ceiling/stair offset or the top of a outdoor wall. And then determine that something belongs to a garage that has not been annotated as garage.
The best you can do is select all floor faces to get their total area. Then you can add/subtract the areas of individual rooms (like the garage), if necessary, or just not select them at all.
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Possibly this could be achieved at some point with the Medeek Wall plugin. BUT, Mr Wilkerson is already trying to do so much with his suite of plugins.
Don’t under estimate the power of the human brain to do this manually with a few building code stats, etc.
(considering evolving, custom floor plans).
EDIT: relevant at the mass model stage of a concept, which is one of the best features of SketchUp.
You can use materials to separate different types of areas. Paint the faces included in your “livable area” with a distinct material (on one side of the face only). You get the total by right-clicking on the material in the In Model Materials tray and selecting Area from the context menu.
The definitions of different types of areas vary. In our parts the area of an apartment also includes the non-load-bearing walls within, for instance.
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It is achievable if the faces to count are annotated with their meaning (“floor” or “livable”). This means there needs to be a convention on what annotation (in SketchUp: attributes or classifications) to use, and it needs to be consistently applied to all related faces. Technically no problem, but practically.
- If you draw faces by hand, you still need to add the attributes manually.
- Or you use a floor drawing tool/plugin that adds the attributes automatically. But since there is no standard, it is possible that floors created by another tool use no attribute or a different attribute and are not counted. You would bind yourself to the proprietary solution of a specific plugin.