I figured I might start a new thread specifically for people to show us what they are using the Medeek plugins for and how they are able to accomplish that.
I had so much fun yesterday (with my house model) that I decided to spend at least one more day fiddling around with this model and modify it a bit more. Honestly the design is a bit of a cludge, but it serves it purpose. I admit I’m no house designer, at least not someone who can make a really attractive design.
Other than the satisfaction of being able to create an interesting (but probably not very practical design) I was able to determine some weak spots within the extensions and some needed updates. I will post further on these once I fully digest all of the issues I encountered. I may also use this model to help me further integrate and test the estimating module.
I haven’t touched the stair module in a while but I will say that after coming back to it I found it very easy to use and very intuitive. I do need to update the textures for it (ie. pressure treated lumber).
Here are a few more screenshots and interesting angles:
The floor plugin was also very handy for creating decks (no railings yet). However I think it would be useful to put in an overall width and length parameter for quick adjustments, I will need to give this some more thought.
If I remove the crazy front porch I think a more modest look is more appealing:
All of the Medeek assemblies are still parametric except for the porch roof (I need to enable subtractive geometry for double glulam rafter roofs). I utilized subtractive geometry quite extensively in the model for the porch roofs and for some modifications to the floor assemblies. If you turn on those two layers/tags you will see my SUBTRACT solids.
The Truss plugin still has a lot to be desired in my opinion. The Wall plugin is much more mature and a joy to use. The beams and posts are very functional and snappy on my old computer however I need to add the duplication functionality into the regen command for posts. I really haven’t tested the floor plugin enough to really come to any conclusions other than I need to set up the opening tool (that is my next big push).
A lot learned in the last couple of days, I really need to do this more often so that I can really understand where the plugins fall down and where they shine.
Besides the regular mdkBIM plugins I also used the grid tool (Medeek Project), but the regular SketchUp grid tool works just as well. A grid tool is a requirement in my opinion, you really need something like this for laying things out correctly.
I also used TIG’s mirror tool for certain manual modeling tasks.
The trim and extend tools in the Medeek Project were also very handy for creating my diagonal braces.
A couple of notes on modeling framing in basements.
1.) Create a face on your slab and then offset a 1/2" (or whatever air gap you want between your concrete wall and your wood framing) edge within this perimeter outline. Use this outline to create your perimeter walls first before framing the interior walls. For the perimeter walls, treat them exactly as you would any other exterior wall, just turn off the sheathing and cladding.
I like to hide the concrete walls while creating the perimeter walls, it is much easier that way to work your way around the perimeter.
2.) Insert your windows and doors into your stemwall first, I like to use the window and door bucks. Then insert your openings into the framed walls (centering on the openings in the concrete), just be sure to turn off the install of the window and door and the exterior trim at this step.
The hand rail is also created automatically with the extension, however the straight sections and the rest of the banister was drawn manually (posts, balustrades and horizontal railing).
In think I’ve spent about four days on this model now. Most of my time is not spent modeling but just trying to figure out where to put rooms and how to break up the spaces logically. I suppose if one had already figured out a floor plan (instead of on the fly) the modeling would proceed much more quickly.
Additionally due to the multi-story nature of this residence/lodge I’m also spending some time shuffling things around (like beams and bearing walls) to make sure everything lines up and there is an adequate load path to the foundation. I haven’t bothered with actually engineering yet (ie. sizing beams or headers), but just gave my best educated guess so as not to get bogged down with all of that. Mostly I just want to push the plugins to their limit and see what they can and can’t do.
Ultimately there are certain situations that I think I will never have a full solution for or at least it would probably just as easy to manually model some of these. I will probably make a video in a couple days pointing out these exceptions.
I’ll also had some eureka moments where I realize I could do something a little differently and it makes me much more efficient. One of these is that any assembly can be put on a completely different layer/tag. So for example I place all of my first floor walls on a 1_FLOOR layer and so on and so forth. This is separate from the built in layers in the plugins. This way I can toggle of all of my walls on a single floor at once but I can also toggle off the sheathing, cladding etc… globally as well with my built in layer/tag system. Turns out this is very useful and an efficient way to model that all of the Medeek users should be made aware of. Using tag folders can also probably do the exact same sort of thing , bottom line there is many ways to get the same result in SketchUp.
Aside from creating the floor plan, making changes is one of the strengths of your plugins. In my business the client makes a lot of changes once they see the model and preliminary PDF’s. What part of the plugin did you use for the porch ? I looked at Revit a long time ago and it felt too clunky for me. Does Revit allow 3rd party development like we enjoy with Sketchup?
Did you record this for a youtube video? This would be great and very useful for using medeek for a holistic approach and process and to pick up all the edge cases that come up in a real design.
This model is quite large now (21 Mb) with almost 100 separate wall assemblies. I’m finding that my old Windows 7 machine is running pretty slow and its painful to have to wait for the model to update. My machine is about 12 years old so it is a bit of a dinosaur respectfully. There may be some tricks I can use to help it along a bit but maybe it is time to upgrade.
The upshot of the last few days “wasted” on modeling instead of coding is that I’ve really seen where I need more efficiency and I now know what feels clunky and what things burn up my time. I keep needing to reposition doors so I need a better way to place doors and windows when their are other walls teeing into the wall I am working on. I don’t have a solution yet but the gears are already turning.
Duplicating assemblies was dealt with recently with the regen feature but I’ve realized that there are a few assemblies I have not enabled this for yet. It’s critical that I get this done.
I’ve also managed to uncover a few obscure bugs (one with the in-wall column tool) which I will be rectifying shortly.
So the wrap around porch roof is probably what you are asking about. The beams and posts and footings were a no brainer.
The porch roof is a bit of a hack. I created a shed rafter roof w/ ledger. I then used the subtract feature to allow me to join them as hip roofs, you will note that the hip rafter(s) do not exist ( I may draw them in manually). I would like to create a complex porch roof module which allows one to quickly and easily create this type of wrap around porch roof (essentially a complex shed roof).
The complex roof module was used to create the main roof and the octagon roof.
When I needed to cut holes or remove things I have not manually edited the assemblies, I’ve used subtraction, the upshot to this is that everything is still completely parametric.
The last 4 versions of SketchUp do notofficially support running on Windows 7 nor 8.
Add to this the fact that Windows 10 is also at end of support. (I was forced to update to Win 11 even though I preferred the Win 10 interface over 11. Actually, I thought Win 7 interface was fine, but that old machine would not support upgrades to SketchUp graphics at the time that required later releases to OpenGL.)
I would agree you need a new development machine running Win 11. As it may be only a matter of time before SketchUp drops support for Win 10. (Likely when the next major version of Windows has been out awhile and is considered stable.)
I really don’t like a post in the middle of my (huge) garage but how else do you span 32 feet? I say cut it in half to 16’, seems a bit more manageable. Any ideas?
The garage is also 32 feet deep so the span of the I-joists (TJI 560 - 14") is 16 feet as well.
It’s not so much spanning the 32’ as much as not having a trampoline with the floor above this garage. I can make the strength numbers work even with a large enough glutam beam but I really want to avoid a bouncy floor. I’ve had issues with an attic floor above a 30 ‘ garage and the movement is very unsettling even though it is fine structurally.
If you had a wall above that is over the beam it can be sheathed to become a structural member holding the floor up from above and reducing the bounce! Ive done it and it worked great.
Turns out I do have a wall above the beam perfectly centered on it. Interesting concept, I like this idea a lot, never would have thought of that To get this to work as a boxed beam I would probably sheath both sides of the wall and nail it off with the sheathing blocked (typical shear wall construction).
I would probably upsize the beam slightly since it is spanning (out-to-out) 32 feet.
The only issue I see is that I have two openings (doors) that break up the wall thereby reducing its effectiveness to act like a true beam. Additionally one would probably need to connect the wall reasonably well to the beam below so that they act together as a unit, otherwise the beam will sag with the floor and the wall will float above it all (in theory). Of course the roof and rafter dead loads will be loading up the wall pretty well so it will probably mostly work in tandem.
To make this work I probably need to get rid of any major openings in the wall. Kind of messes up the design a bit but I will rethink it.
I find this topic super interesting. In Germany this type of construction is as good as never done, except maybe for a a garage or a shed. It‘s „regular - brick type walls on the outside with LOTS of insulation and inside it‘s plasterboard walls on a metal support underconstruction. So I love seeing this completely different type of building. One of course wonders how much more wind/hurican resistant these brick type constructions are. Still - super cool to see how far you can get with wood.
