Medeek Wall

A whole new segment of the plugin or suite, but yes I could see where this could fit into the overall puzzle.

Right now I’m mostly focused on just getting the geometry and basic parameters in place but eventually the plugin suite could also include:

  • Estimating (Bill of Materials, Pricing Database)
  • Engineering
  • Construction Drawings (automated generation that are user configurable, export to DXF)
  • Project Management
  • Project Finances (billing hours, POs, Invoicing etc…)

The cool thing about SketchUp is you have this nice Ruby API that literally opens the door up to just about anything. Other programs also have similar sorts of APIs, for example Quickbooks has a nice API (I know since I’ve previously worked with it in quite some detail) so it is rather easy to send data between the two programs. One could take all of the financial data from a plugin running in SketchUp and pass it directly into your Quickbooks account. This is the power of programming, anything is possible.

I’m trying to simulate a G-rib metal wall panel here (clay and stone color):

The problem of course is that the shadow will be cast a certain direction on the original texture/image but when you render it out the light source may be the opposing direction which will make things look a bit off.

Modeling the actual texture/profile of the panel is not a good idea either since it would make the model very heavy.

Thoughts?

View model here:

For your model example, the siding modelled would add about 50kb and 3000 polygons.

Don’t go nuts. All the other construction elements you’re adding add to the polygon count already, don’t go crazy with the siding.

If you must have your cake and eat it too, I suppose you can always have two versions: one layer with low polygons and another layer with high polygons calculated off the simple one. Toggle between fast, and high poly as needed? If that can’t really work after all, I wouldn’t bother.

This is a case where the ability of rendering software to do bump mapping would seem to be the right tool for the job.

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Version 0.9.9b - 10.31.2018

  • Enabled built-up headers within the window draw and edit menus: None, Top, Bottom or Both.
  • Added the built-up header parameter to the Windows tab of the global settings.

The window to the left is a good example for where the top plate is not needed, just the bottom plate. as the header butts up directly against the top plate of the wall.

The window to the right is set lower in the wall and requires both top and bottom plate as shown.

The built-up header parameter allows four options: None, Top, Bottom or both. The default behavior can also be set in the global settings.

As with the custom widths on the trimmers and kings I am test bedding this with the windows first, once everyone has had a chance to work this through a bit I will roll it out for doors and garage doors.

Where do you get all your nice textures? Can I borrow them? I’m also looking for some nice stone, and vinyl shake textures to simulate the Tando Siding that we sell.

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Some of them are already included with SketchUp, some of them I find online and then alter or adjust to fit my needs.

Most of them I start with some base image and then create on my own (ie. siding, horz. plywood, densglass, horz. OSB, felt etc…)

The recent G-rib metal panel is a bit of an exception. I found an accurate model of the profile in the 3D warehouse (luckily I did not have to create the profile from scratch) and then utilized it within SU to create the shadows for the image. I had to muck around with the shadows (time of day and season) a bit to get the desired result. Then dropped the screenshot into Photoshop, scaled it to the desired pixels and further adjusted the color and contrast so it looked about right and then exported it to a png image.

You or anyone else is more than welcome to use any of the material textures provided with the plugins.

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I tried doing that with the images on the Tando website but I couldn’t get them to repeat properly.

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Yeah, that is the tricky part. I’m not wizard at it either. My siding textures aren’t as perfect as I would like and my roof textures (IKO) are fairly decent but some of them exhibit some banding, but are mostly passable.

My timber texture has issues, but I haven’t had the time to improve it or replace it yet.

I tend to make my texture in SU…

It’s quick and dirty, but was fit for purpose…

john

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I’m really not following what you are doing here, but it does look really interesting. Are you creating a bump map?

PhotoShop has a feature for creating repeating textures - a little complex to learn though.

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no bump, just slicing up an image I had, cropping and straightening with SU tools, then work out the best repeat by cropping a component, when done I explode the 4 components, make one face texture unique and the select all 4 faces and use 'combine textures…

here’s the material skp, I made…

drivway_tile.skp (1.4 MB)

I added depth with geometry…

john

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This is an example of metal roof and wall cladding (utilizing the Material Manager in both the Truss and Wall plugins):

View model here:

The model was created with all three plugins. The only manual edit was moving the person outside of the structure and re-positioning of two anchor bolts that landed in the middle of the garage door. The entire model except for the foundation (slab-on-grade) is fully parametric, moving openings or changing the roof pitch is a couple clicks of the mouse. Model creation time was about 10 minutes.

As far as speed of modeling goes I think this is starting to close in on other design packages like Revit and Chief Architect. Once I add the estimating and then the engineering it will even exceed their capabilities.

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Tutorial 6 - Custom Material Library:

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The Custom material organiser could be a stand alone extension or an example of how the material panel should be!

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I agree, it was a fairly ambitious piece of programming to make it all come out right. I’ve now employed it within the Truss plugin and will probably use the same code base in the Foundation plugin as well.

As I’ve been saying all along this Wall plugin is a deep plugin but it is also very broad as well, the windows and doors module could easily be a stand alone plugin as well as the beam and now stair module.

I will continue to add more tools and features as the need arises (and it will) so ultimately the plugin will become much more than just a typical plugin. It will become a whole suite of integrated tools or a building system that allows one to fully design, engineer, estimate and manage the complete design and construction of residential (and even commercial buildings).

That is why I’ve labeled the entire suite of plugins “mdkBIM”. I am working to bring them all together into a synergistic whole.

The reality is there is still a lot more to do and a long ways to go but progress has been steady recently. One never really knows how all this will work out, perhaps a bigger and better developer will beat me to the punch, but the one thing that is certain is that the plugin(s) are incrementally improving with every new release.

A whole different area I really haven’t explored yet is fixtures (and furniture).

Technically this is a very broad topic and could really use an entirely different plugin to do it justice.

However, I will add in a toolbar called “Fixtures” which will allow the user to select from a matrix of options (Bath, Bedroom, Kitchen etc…) and then to select from some standard layouts.

For bathrooms the layout below (Layout A) is very typical in the US for many mid-range homes:

An 8’x5’ bathroom with a sink, toilet and tub.

The idea being that the user can quickly generate any standard layout from a library of components. I will probably include a few default (low poly) components however it will be up to the user to drop their own preferred components into the plugin sub-folders if they want to be able to select from them in the drop down menus.

I don’t want to include a large number of high poly count components in the plugin because is will make the .rbz file too large and cumbersome. Besides there are vast libraries of manufacturer components available in the 3D warehouse.

The cool thing about integrating this within the plugin suite is that it will then be possible to obtain counts for estimating purposes on many of these fixtures and assign prices etc…

The Edit menu will allow the user to swap out any of the components and also custom position them as required.

For this particular bathroom layout (and most layouts in general) there is a left and right hand orientation. The user will be able to select the orientation in the draw and/or edit menu. The first mouse click will establish the insertion point the second click will establish the rotation. Clicking the shift key will toggle orientation (left or right).

Some fixtures such as the bath tub shown come in a left and right version. It will be up to the user to upload both versions for use however I will include an additional parameter (rotation: 0 or 180) so that orientation can be controlled.

With this new module I will start with bathrooms first and then branch into other rooms as the need arises.

Why? I understand the tubs come in left and right versions, but why not just mirror the entire assembly through Ruby if the user wants to change the orientation?

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You do have a point, however I still need a parameter that will flip the orientation of the tub independent of the entire room because there are four possibilities: