Development and Updates for the Medeek Wall Plugin

[Medeek]

Version 0.9.3 - 08.26.2018
- Added a Custom Material Library/Manager in the Materials tab of the Global Settings.
- Enabled custom materials for sheathing, cladding and ext. wainscoting in the HTML wall draw and edit menus.

Being that this a completely new feature I may have missed something in my testing but overall I'm fairly happy with the way it has turned out.

Currently I am limiting image type (for textures) to .jpg or .png, but may extend it to other image types if the need arises.

As noted in the changelog notes above the custom materials are only able to be applied to sheathing, cladding, and wainscoting.  I will be extending this feature to other elements in the near future (ie. gypsum, trim, casing etc...)

Clicking on the status icon (red or green) will allow the toggling between inactive or active status.  If a material is listed as "inactive" it will not appear in the draw or edit menus and cannot be utilized in the model.  This feature has been included so that a user can define as many materials as they like but only activate a handful that they may need for a project, thereby keeping the drop down menus from becoming too cluttered.

One thing I have thought about doing is grouping materials within the material manager.  This would then allow the user to determine which materials get loaded into which drop down menu.  (ie. sheathing, cladding etc...)  I haven't implemented this yet since I haven't determined the best way to handle this yet within the interface but it is probably something for future releases.

[Medeek]

So - long story short, loading a preset before drawing a wall does not seem to work. Be interested to hear what you think.

When you load a preset are you clicking the update button before you start drawing?

[Medeek]

Version 0.9.3b - 08.29.2018
- Enabled the ability to group materials (in the Material Library) and control which drop down menu they will appear in.
- Added an SKM file import utility to the Material Library.

[Medeek]

When an interior wall terminates without adjoining other walls at a corner or tee, it is what I call the "end" condition.  Up until now when gypsum was turned on it was only being applied to the exterior and interior face of the "interior" wall. 

Now if an interior wall panel has an end condition it will also receive wall board treatment on the ends in order to complete the wall panel:



Also note that I have enabled the Wall Gypsum Corner parameter in the Sheathing Tab of the global settings.  This will allow for either "flush" or "miter" treatment of the gypsum, the screenshot above shows the gypsum with mitering.



These two items were per user request.

[Medeek]

Version 0.9.3c - 08.30.2018
- Enabled the Wall Gypsum Corner parameter in the sheathing tab of the global settings (MITER/FLUSH).
- Interior walls now receive end treatment when gypsum enabled.
- Gypsum wrap enabled for openings in interior walls that do not have a window or door installed.

[Medeek]

Version 0.9.4 - 08.31.2018
- Added additional (New Zealand) standard metric stud sizes: 45x90, 45x140, 45x190, 45x240, 45x290
- Addressed multiple bugs having to do with metric templates (glulam headers, columns, SSWs).
- Added (New Zealand) standard metric sizes for window and door headers.

If you are using metric templates you will want to update the plugin to this latest version which addresses a number of critical bugs when using metric units.  I really need to spend more time in metric templates testing things.  Unfortunately, most of my time is spent working in imperial/US units so that side of the house is more thoroughly vetted.

While I'm on the topic of metric templates I still need to provide standard size metric columns and beams (the plugin currently defaults to imperial sizes for these two building elements).  I have a pretty good idea on column sizes in New Zealand since I just spent some time perusing their building code and becoming familiar with it but I need some input from other countries who use metric lumber sizes (ie. UK, France, Norway, Sweden, South Africa, Germany etc...)

[Medeek]

Version 0.9.4b - 09.01.2018
- Fixed a bug with corner stud placement where corner angles are extreme values.

[Bob_CP]

I bet this question has been asked and answered elsewhere, but

whats the schedule for rolling out the rake wall capability?

Thanks!

[Medeek]

Version 0.9.4c - 09.03.2018
- Improved the Tee intersection algorithm of the auto-corner configuration module.
- Fixed a minor bug in the Windows tab of the Global Settings.

[Medeek]

Not wanting to clutter the toolbars any further I waffled quite a bit on this decision but I think it makes more sense to provide a separate icon and a "Draw Garage Door" feature, hence the new menu will appear as below:



Garage doors are kind of their own beast.  Typically much larger than a simple man door and various options such portal framing further complicate the matter.  By completely separating the two I am better able to fully customize the UI for garage door specific parameters and features.

[Medeek]

The recent update with the gypsum option (miter) needed some further attention.  While I was sorting that out it became obvious that, along with tee intersections, columns that are not full height need to have the ability to cut out the gypsum, sheathing or cladding when the column is less than the full height of the wall.



Note that the advanced options for columns allows the user to specify which element to trim away as shown in the column edit menu above.  In some cases the beam may project through the wall to the exterior of the structure.  In this case one would want to cut away the interior gypsum, sheathing and cladding as shown.  The exterior gypsum is referring to interior walls with gypsum cladding on both sides.

[Medeek]

Tee intersections will now automatically remove the gypsum where the walls meet:



The algorithm which notches out the top plates is very similar to this algorithm, which notches out the gypsum.  For interior walls, as shown above, the tee intersection may be on either the "interior" or "exterior" of the wall.  Hence the algorithm needs to be smart enough to detect which side of the wall is being affected and notch the appropriate gypsum wall panel. 

Further refinement is probably in order since the result is not a true mitered corner however it is a start and certainly and improvement from when tee intersections were simply ignored with the gypsum.

[Medeek]

One thing to note is that gypsum is never really installed "mitered".  The finished corners are always created with drywall corners (corner bead - outside corners) or drywall tape (inside corners).

https://www.homedepot.com/b/Building-Materials-Drywall-Drywall-Corner-Bead/N-5yc1vZc7qn

https://www.homedepot.com/c/steps_to_finishing_inside_corners_HT_PG_BM

I added the mitering option to the gypsum primarily for aesthetic reasons, especially for outside corners.  Most designers want to see a finished corner not a raw drywall corner where the corner bead has not yet been applied. 

So for tee intersections the fact that it is not mitered is probably mute for most purposes however at some point I will rectify this as my schedule allows.

[Medeek]

The number of garage door types and variants is almost exhausting, yet another plugin within a plugin.  To begin with I will start with the following door types:

- Solid
- Panel (Panels will consist of 18" or 21" panels (or metric equivalents: 455mm, 525mm) arranged in such a way to allow for 3" (70mm) increments in door height.)
- Standard Raised Panel
- Long Raised Panel
- Standard Flat Panel
- Long Flat Panel
- Glass Standard Raised Panel (Glass indicated that the top panel will have glass inserts)
- Glass Long Raised Panel
- Glass Standard Flat Panel
- Glass Long Flat Panel
- Full Glass Standard Panel (Full glass indicates that entire door is glass)
- Full Glass Long Panel

There are many other garage door variants:  Carriage doors etc... those will be added per user request.

[Medeek]

Slowly working through the garage door module.  Here is a first look at the garage door casing:

 

(Painted blue for emphasis)

With this new module I'm getting things right from the get go.  Materials options are incorporated from the new Material Library so that piece of the puzzle will be much more streamlined and easy to use.

Since I am working through this a little more slowly (and carefully) it may be a few days before I release any fixes, I apologize for the delay.

As I mentioned in a previous post I have broken garage doors out into their own separate container, as such garage doors have their own edit menu etc...  this is a little bit more work but will result in more flexibility and long term improvements will be more attainable.