So the plug-in is open for purchase eh?
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Great Job Nathanial! It is working great so far. I will email you direct any notes I find. Attached is a doubled joist #19. It was simple. Move copy then rename the instance to custom_Joist19A. Very powerful collection of plugins!!
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Yes, the plugin should now be available for purchase and for those who have already purchased it via the mdkBIM bundle it is now available for download and install.
I desperately need to work on the hole tool and the floor covering tool. These two additions will make the plugin truly powerful. At this point it is not much better than the previous floor module in the Truss plugin (other than the ability to create polygon floor outlines).
There will be instances that hangers will be utilized however joists that are cut at diagonals will complicate the matter somewhat, I’m not even sure what hardware is available in that regard, I will have to spend some time researching that one and then coming up with a clever algorithm.
Please email me any feedback directly to nathan@medeek.com, any and all feedback is appreciated.
I’ve already updated the database so anyone who holds a license for the plugin has now had their license renewed for a full year.
P.S.
I’ve gone ahead and sent out the mass notification announcing the release since I had some existing license owners who were attempting to purchase the extension again when they had no need to (Issuing refunds is time consuming and not very fun). Oh well, I’m waiting for the onslaught.
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The current todo list in no specific order:
1.) Floor Coverings: Tile, Carpet, Hardwood etc…
2.) Floor Openings: Stairwell and Crawlspace or ladder access
3.) In Floor Beams
4.) Blocking: Mid-span blocking, custom blocking, edge blocking
5.) Ledgers: customize each edge or side of an assembly with a custom ledger or rim joist setting.
6.) Hardware: Joist Hangers, Beam Hangers, diagonal bracing, deck holdowns
7.) Railing: for decks
8.) Custom Joist Doubling: ability to double any number of joists in the array
9.) Custom Joist Offset: ability to offset any number of joists independently.
10) Global Joist Offset
11.) Max. Joist Span Indicator: Engineering related
12.) Diagonal deck boards
13.) MPC Wood Floor Trusses
14.) Steel Trusses (not high priority)
Feel free to help me add to this list.
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Oh, yes, all the new code requirements for deck attachment! Simpson Strongtie is loving it.
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I am currently working on items #8, #9 and #10 on the list.
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Version 0.9.1 - 09.10.2024
- Enabled doubling of individual joists.
- Enabled offsetting of individual joists.
- Enabled global offsetting of joists.
- Added a duplicate floor check to the regen module for all floor types.
- Updated the javascript logic within the License tab of the Global Settings.
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Tutorial 1 - Extension Overview (19:43 min.)
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I’ve now turned my attention to item #2 on the list, floor openings. After giving this some thought this morning I’ve realized that there will be instances of non-rectangular openings or even non-orthogonal openings (ie. octagon or other angles cuts across the joists). A rectangular opening is fairly simple to deal with, at least at first glance. You insert the headers and then the trimmers as required. In fact, you can easily make it very granular so that each element can be turned on or off.
The problem becomes much more complicated with polygon or non-orthogonal openings. With orthogonal polygons at least you can check the direction of the edges and determine what sides are headers or trimmers but with non-orthogonal openings it becomes unclear.
Should I just start with rectangular openings?
Thoughts?
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Ive designed some complex custom homes. The typical would have wings at angles 45’ 30’ or ??
Trying to think of the oddest might be a stairwell that creates a floor system challenge to solve accurately. That said most dont actually detail the solutions. I get a lot of compliments because I show actual framing detail. Your plugins have made that easier than ever.
Starting with Rectangular openings is a good idea. Odd shapes will probably have a rectangular “Structure” with angles frames into its corners.
Im making a list of ideas and possible bugs. I have had a couple of problems with changing joist direction but it doesnt do it everytime so its hard to pin down if its a bug. I do open ruby console to try and trap a problem. nothing yet.
One addition might be to allow deck boards to overhang. I did one yesterday that needed 1" overhang on three sides. It was fine with custom editing.
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Here is a typical rectangular framed opening within an I-Joist floor:
Each header or trimmer can be made optional as well as the number of ply, material and any other custom offset or extending. For instance both headers (top and bottom) extend beyond the opening to butt up against the doubled joists on both side (Start Ext. and End Ext.).
Also notice that the one header is LSL while the other is I-Joist (2 ply). The parameters right off the top for a header will probably be:
Header 1/Header 2: On/Off (there may be cases where you don’t want the header drawn on one or both sides of the opening.
1.) Header Type: Lumber, PT Lumber, Timber, PT Timber, I-Joist, LSL, LVL, PSL (note this will also set the material for these members). Down the road I may also add a steel option.
1a.) Header Depth: Not applicable to I-Joist headers
1b.) Header Width: Not applicable to I-Joist Headers
1c.) I-Joist Family: Only applicable to I-Joist Headers
1d.) I-Joist Type: Only applicable to I-Joist Headers
2.) Header Ply: 1,2,3
3.) Start Extension: positive or negative value accepted
4.) End Extension: positive or negative value accepted
5.) Start Hanger: None or a list of hangers to choose from
6.) End Hanger: None or a list of hangers to choose from
Trimmers will have the same parameters except that I don’t see a need for the extension parameters, but I may be missing something.
The start and end of each member will be determined by the axis direction. So the end closest to the origin will be the start of each member. In the same manner header 1 and trimmer 1 will be the headers and trimmers closest to the origin.
I think I will start with the rectangular opening since this is a much easier low hanging fruit than a polygon opening and I know I can solve it and produce a workable solution in relatively short order.
Let me give the overhanging deck boards some thought. I can quite quickly add a parameter which applies a global overhang but assigning a specific overhang to each side or specific side gets a bit more complicated. The question is how to manage this within the interface, I will need to give this some further thought.
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When it comes to openings you can kind of think of them as a window in a wall, except that we now have two separate headers instead of one and not nearly as many options (ie. trim, casing, shutters etc…)
The parameters for an opening will be:
Opening Name: OPENING1, etc…
Opening Geometry: Rectangle
Opening Width: dimension along the Y-axis
Opening Length: dimension along the X-axis
Header 1: Yes/No
Header 2: Yes/No
Trimmer 1: Yes/No
Trimmer 2: Yes/No
I’m also thinking about a gypsum wrap around the vertical edges of the opening but typically this would only be around three of the edges of the opening (ie. stairs).
Unlike the window draw tool, this “floor” opening tool will require two points to define the location and size of the opening within the floor.
Under the hood the opening tool will require two boolean subtractions, one for the cutting of the sheathing, floor coverings, gypsum and deck boards and another for the cutting of joists and insulation. In the case that there are no headers or trimmers activated then the degenerate case is only one boolean subtraction.
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Version 0.9.2 - 09.11.2024
- Enabled a overhang for deck boards.
- Enabled a global offset for deck boards.
- Fixed a bug with floor presets.
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Your in the zone !!!
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Thank-you for the suggestion. It was an easy add so I knocked it out in about 45 minutes for you.
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I just found a bug in 0.9.2, do not upgrade until I’ve released 0.9.2b. Also note that all floor presets will need to be recreated. In the BETA phase I am not worried about preserving backward compatibility since the parameters are changing almost daily.
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Version 0.9.3 - 09.12.2024
- Fixed a critical bug in the Draw Floor menu.
- Added a status icon (Draw Mode: Polyline or Face) in upper right corner of the Draw Floor menu.
- Added the Draw Mode parameter to Floors tab of the Global Settings.
I will also be adding in a “Rectangle” draw mode in the near future. Some users my want to have the default draw mode set to rectangular so that they can quickly draw a floor with two mouse clicks rather than four.
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I was thinking about hanger hardware for the joists but then I realized that things are quite a bit more complicated with these polygon floors. For example look at this floor:
The situation gets interesting for the first six joists in the array, they would require four hangers each rather than just the normal two. I’m going to have to really put on my thinking cap for this one.
And then you have the additional complication of non-orthogonal edges which may require special skewed hangers… Fortunately those are probably not as common so I can probably ignore that case for now.
P.S.
I may have to bounce some ideas off of @DanRathbun and the other great minds on this forum to devise an efficient algorithm.
At first glance I think I can examine each joist individually once they’ve been trimmed/cut and count the number of edges that run parallel to the joist (x-axis or y-axis). For a regular lumber joist the total number of pieces will be the number of horizontal (long edges) divided by four. That will tell me how many hangers I actually need.
I can then cycle through this collection of edges finding all of the terminal vertices/locations and assign to each one a direction (left facing or right facing). From there it is simply a matter of running a for loop and placing the hangers. I think this will work but it may not be optimized yet.
P.P.S
I also just realized that there is the possibility for some joists to be doubled, which will naturally require a different hanger, so the hanger selection will require two parameters, one for single ply an one for two ply. However, there may be a situation where you want there to be hangers only on one side of the floor (ie. a deck with a ledger and beam supported on the other end) so four parameters for hanger selection:
1.) Start Hanger (1X Ply)
2.) Start Hanger (2X Ply)
3.) End Hanger (1X Ply)
4.) End Hanger (2X Ply)
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When will the extension be available on the SketchUcation store?
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