Development and Updates for the Medeek Truss Plugin

[Medeek]

Version 2.7.7 - 07.31.2020
- Fixed a bug with all assemblies when auto-assignment of materials is turned off in the global settings.

[Medeek]

I've been giving some serious thought to the estimating module the last couple of days as I regroup and review my various todo lists.

I would like to spend a few days and update the estimating module to include rafter roofs.  However, as I think about rafters and their lengths I am wondering what length exactly are we talking about?  Do we want the actual (longest length of the member) or do we want a horizontal projection of the length?  Typically both the top and bottom of a rafter has a bevel cut or even a compound bevel cut.

The ridge board on the other hand is very simple (generally).  There are no beveled end cuts so things are straight forward.

[Medeek]

In a nutshell this is the basic algorithm for the rafter module for complex roofs:



Of course the devil is the details and there are a lot of details missing in this picture.

The overall picture seems simple enough however there are a number of special cases where rafters align with ridge boards and the over simplistic boolean subtraction algorithm will not suffice.  I will need to try and account for all of those special cases.

The offset is a factor of the ridgeboard, hip rafter, valley rafter or flying hip rafter width.  However, as you can see in the detail below when the roof planes are not the same (asymmetric) the offset will not be symmetric and must be calculated, hence the opposing roof plane (pitch) at that edge must be known/tracked.  For a ridge board edge the offset will be given by:

offset  = T/(1 + tanθ/tanA)

Since the offset is only a function of the ratio of the two opposing pitches this equation should also hold for hips and valleys as well.  Note that when the angles are equal the equation degenerates to T/2 as one would expect.

Once all of the offsets are determined then it is merely a matter of generating the new points for the polygon drawn in blue highlighter.  Once that polygon (points) is determined it becomes the cutting polygon for the rafters.  Technically it is a boolean intersection rather than a subtraction, but that is all semantics.

[Medeek]

Version 2.7.8 - 10.09.2020
- Added a "Refresh Licensee Data" button within the License tab of the Global Settings.

[Medeek]

Version 2.7.9 - 10.23.2020
- Fixed a "rounding error" bug for pyramid shaped hip rafter roofs.

[Medeek]

Tutorial 19: Polygon Floor Workaround (21.46 min.)



Manual workaround until the upcoming Medeek Floor plugin is released.

[Medeek]

View model used in Tutorial 19:

https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/f481ad29-cc0e-41d4-8d9d-661e30890e39/Polygon-Floor-Workaround

[Medeek]

Version 2.8.0 - 02.10.2020
- Minor modification to the range of available pitches for valley truss sets.

[Medeek]

Version 2.8.1 - 03.13.2021
- Standardized the naming convention of the plugin toolbars.

All of the Truss plugin toolbars will be prefixed with "Medeek", this will make it easier to find and sort through them, especially if you have a large number of extensions installed.

[Medeek]

Version 2.8.2 - 03.24.2021
- Added additional pitches to the shed and shed w/ ledger draw menus.

[Haggai]

Version 2.2.3 - 10.26.2018
- Added a Custom Material Library/Manager in the Materials tab of the Global Settings.
- Enabled custom materials for wall sheathing, wall cladding, roof sheathing and roof cladding in the HTML wall draw and edit menus for common trusses.
- Enabled the ability group materials and control which drop down menu they will appear in.
- Added an SKM file import utility to the Material Library.
- Default wall sheathing and wall cladding materials brought in line with options available in wall plugin.





Note the various wall sheathing options that are brought over from the wall plugin (ie. Tyvek, Zip Systems, Plywood, Densglass etc..) 

Also note that the custom and expanded materials selection is only available for common truss shapes (ie. common trusses, scissor trusses etc...).  I have not yet implemented the new system for other truss shapes and rafter roofs, that is work for yet another day.

There is still a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done with this plugin.  Many of the specialty truss shapes do not even have advanced options available to them yet.  All I can do is keep hacking away at it and maybe one day I will have the resources to really push this thing along.

Hi,

Is there now the possibilities to apply an OSB-Tyvek Material to a roof (shed in my case)

[Medeek]

Version 2.8.3 - 06.04.2021
- Added four additional parameters to the "User Interface" section of the General tab of the global settings. This allows the customization (colors) of the HTML menus and buttons.



This completes the user interface upgrade for all the major Medeek plugins.  The Truss, Foundation and Electrical plugins are now up to par with the Wall plugin.  Now on to bigger and better things, that task was very tedious but necessary.

[Medeek]

Version 2.8.4 - 06.13.2021
- Added a "Regen" context menu item for all truss assemblies (eg. Common Trusses, Scissor Trusses, Timber Trusses etc...)
- Added an option for subtractive geometry into the General tab of the Global Settings.
- Sub-groups within truss assemblies can be made persistent and "subtractive" by naming these groups to (subtract1, subtract2, subtract3, etc...)
- Components within truss assemblies can also be made persistent and "subtractive" by naming the component instance to (subtract1, subtract2, subtract3, etc...)







Once I've tested this a bit a further and received more feedback I will enable the same subtractive option/feature for rafter roofs and complex roofs.

[Medeek]

Version 2.8.4b - 06.13.2021
- Subtractive geometry can be constrained to only subtract from Sheathing and Cladding by setting the subtractive geometry parameter to "SHEATHING" in the global settings.



... and this is why feedback is important.

[Medeek]

Version 2.8.5 - 06.14.2021
- Added stats (roof cladding) for common and monopitch truss roofs which can be analyzed within the Medeek Estimator (Wall Extension) module.
- Enabled net area calculations for roof sheathing and roof cladding statistics.



If cladding and/or sheathing is removed by subtractive geometry or features such as skylights, this information/data will be recorded and accounted for within the assembly.  When the Medeek Estimator runs it will pick up the net and gross areas for cladding and sheathing and report the correct amounts.  Previously only the gross areas were reported by the estimator.