I am adding a sponsors section to each plugin page:
Hopefully this will be another small source of revenue to help offset my recent decision to skip out on subscription licensing. I am also excited to be able to provide some recognition to those who have been instrumental in the development of these plugins.
If you feel like you should be included as one of the development or finanicial sponsors please contact me via email.
Each sponsorship includes a listing with your logo, name (individual or company), a short paragraph explaining your business, credentials, products etc… and a link to your website.
The same sponsors section will be shown at the bottom of all three plugin pages.
I am also open to suggestions on how to make this feature/listing more attractive to potential sponsors.
After some discussion on stairs today and giving it some more thought it did occur to me that one could pre-assemble some more common stair configurations with the plugin and then at a later time simply copy and paste these into a new or different models. The inserted stairs (groups) can then be edited just like any other stair assembly created from scratch in the model/file.
This same strategy, of course, applies to walls, beams, roofs, foundations etc…
If anyone notices any problems with this strategy please let me know.
I’ve looked around for some relatively lightweight electrical outlets and switches to use as the default components in the new electrical module. Unfortunately, everything in the warehouse is too complex or high poly count for my liking.
I’ve created some very basic outlets that I probably use in this new module, you can preview them here:
I will also create a series of low poly switches.
The electrical boxes are dimensionally accurate and are models of the Carlon Blue PVC boxes. The faceplates are per the specs sheets from Leviton standard face plate sizes.
When I get some extra time I will add in more options for boxes and face plates.
Yet another plugin within an already beautiful plugin. The plugin suite is not only increasing in depth but becoming very broad as well. The best is yet to come.
Some have asked me where does it all end. My best answer, at this point, is only when the plugin(s) can successfully model, create full construction documents, estimate and engineer every aspect of a residential design. Then my work will be done. Looks like I have a few years to go…
My goal this year is to hopefully bring on some extra programming help so I can further accelerate the development and eventually get to the engineering (my piece de resistance) modules.
I work in electrical distribution. Without taking the time to model them, I would guess that decorator style switches and outlets would, for any given level of detail, be of slightly lower poly count - especially if you are only modeling the visible face.
You are probably correct, less curves means far less polygons.
If you are going to fill a whole house with outlets and switches, they need to be as light weight as possible. You really cannot see all of the detail anyways unless you zoom up really close to a particular electrical component. I may even eliminate the screws on the face plate, it seems like an unnecessary detail that is above and beyond what is needed visually.
On a related note I will probably make this a separate plugin entirely within the mdkBIM suite: Medeek Electrical.
From a builders point of view all you to have are the box, face plate, and the face of switches or plugs. This will give you the quantities you need. We don’t need to see all of it.
Basically the Medeek Electrical extension will be a stand alone extension however it will be designed to specifically work with the rest of the extensions within the mdkBIM suite. Since it is a stand alone extension I will start a new thread to further discuss its development and additional comments and questions.
I would recommend creating a Medeek MEP (Mechanical, Electrical, & Plumbing) extension. I believe this is a fairly common grouping among BIM tools and drawing sets.
(Anybody that knows more than me, please correct me if I’m wrong. Thanks!)
I do like this idea however rather than create a single extension I will create a new suite of extensions called mdkMEP which encompass all three of the new extensions. I have way too much on my plate to do much with the mechanical and plumbing extensions just yet but at least I want to get something out on the electrical for now.
Would it be easier to have one Materials Manager for the whole mdkBIM suite? Choosing materials for roof-adjacent walls is available in the Truss plugin. Loading custom materials into one manager is faster than loading custom materials into two managers.
I will need to give this some further thought. Since the material managers are exactly the same code (except for some cosmetic stuff), you can theoretically copy entries from one material manager config file into the other.
Shared or separate, good question. If they are separate then a way to move materials from one to the other easily.
You may want to consider creating a Medeek BIM thread for general discussion. Updates about the mdkBIM suite could go there. Instead of me emailing you generic questions and comments, I could post them there. Of course, it is not worth the trouble if there is not a significant number of mdkBIM users on the SketchUp Community forum.
Since mdkBIM encompasses the three plugins currently I would prefer that you post plugin specific questions into each of their forums. However, it might make sense to have a generic mdkBIM thread.
I am very excited for when you start doing the webinars! You might want to do some sort of client survey in order to figure out days & times and what people mostly want to learn, e.g. specific features, mainly the Wall plugin, or the whole of mdkBIM.
Just loaded the Wall Plugin and so far all is good. I did notice that the HTML menus seem to be loading quite a bit faster and the performance overall seems to have improved. It looks like the browser engine under the hood has been updated and already there is a marked improvement, thank-you SketchUp.
When you drag a menu and then select a drop down box the bug where the drop down opens up at the previous location is now resolved. Looks like I might have to update to SU 2019.
I am thinking that 3D (No Framing) option is good for the schematic design phase. In global settings, Wall Framing set to NO sets default wall assemblies to 3D (No Framing), but still creates framing data?
You might want to do some sort of client survey in order to figure out days & times and what people mostly want to learn, e.g. specific features, mainly the Wall plugin, or the whole of mdkBIM.
