Quantities from model

kyyu · 17 Jun 2011, 01:20

@sdmitch, WoW, that's a great plugin you whipped up for this one off problem. I will have to study it, a little, for my education.

@jemagnussen, I always like to try things out. I used sketchup's "Outer Shell" feature to combine your 3 layers into 1 (2 at a time). Then used sdmitch's volume plugin, which looks to work great. One thing, that I had to figure out was, don't select the front face edges. Only the front face and the lines extending back. I double checked the volume by grouping the 1st and last slice, and checking the volume in "entitiy info box" and it was very close to the output file.

Quantities_1b.skp
volume_1b.txt

-Kwok

jeff hammond · 17 Jun 2011, 03:42

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keyboard maestro

[flash=700,510:2c8kzkb2]http://www.youtube.com/v/EXnXNV61ycA?version=3&hl=en_US&rel=0&hd=1[/flash:2c8kzkb2]

[sorry about the loud trackpad clicks.. i guess it's pretty close to the laptop mic.. i'll use a mouse next time]

jemagnussen · 17 Jun 2011, 08:32

Hi all and welcome to a new day... (here in West Africa that is... )

sdmitch,
I don't really know what is the problem with my setup, but when I try your method and run the Volume Plug-in on a slice where I take out only front face (with edges) and the edges protruding towards the back face that I have deleted after selecting both and then group them, I don't get a proper "group solid" that I can get the volume from. I run Sketchup 8 Pro on XP SP3 and tried to use your version of the volume plug-in, which I believe is same as TIG's volume plug-in... or ? But don't get it to work, so far only way for me is to re-draw every 1 meter cross section and make it into a "group solid" in order to get it to work.

kyyu,
I have tried to work with your file for a long time, but fails to get any "group solid" and volume out of it...? Must be my setup that is something wrong with.

Jeff Hammond,

WoW Jeff, I'm impressed. You did a very fine job at that, as you can see from my text above I'm in the situation that my old XP does not really have the capabilities of your Mac system. One friend of mine recently let me play around with his iPad for some days, and yes, it rocks. If only Steve was not as proprietary as he is then it would probably convince me to move to the Mac platform... I really wish I could do what you did on your Mac, that is just what I need, and probably a lot of other folks in the construction industry. Take a road for example; it would be a breeze to take out quantities with your setup.

So far it looks like there is only the hard way for me, but THANK YOU all for your time and effort to try to solve this for me, I really appreciate it. And please excuse my English, it’s my second language as I’m Danish.

jemagnussen · 17 Jun 2011, 08:52

Hi again,

Come to think about it, it might be much easier to make the quantity take out by taking the volume of the first and last 1 m slice and enter the numbers in Excel and let it figure out the even distibution in between. Think that is an easier approach.

I'm working hard to use 3D visualization in my profession as Production Manager on construction projects, the model here is part of a new groyne, and being able to use Sketchup to produce and present the 3D visualization of the project and the steps in between is really a benefit for all parties involved.
The quantification would also look good if being able to present it visually in 3D, slice by slice, but it is probably overkill as an Excel sheet will just as well show the factual quantities and for the time being be most trustworthy for the parties involved as it is a sort of a defacto standard.

Best regards
Jesper

TIG · 17 Jun 2011, 09:06

With v8 'volume' is built-in.
My Volume plugins come in two versions - an integration one [by slice], that is slow but reliable to within certain accuracy; and one using topology, that is fast but fails with non-solid/manifold objects.
My Slicer isn't probably accurate enough to use for your purposes.
Jeff's clever macro method is the best without writing a purpose made plugin...
This is a simple free PC tool http://www.nonags.com/freeware-do-it-again_43.html or this one http://freelabs.info/MacroRecorder.aspx or this http://download.cnet.com/Easy-Macro-Recorder/3000-2094_4-10414139.html [15day-trial] - there are also several others with more features for a few $...

sdmitch · 19 Jun 2011, 00:50

jemagnussen, My volumn plugins doesn't create any "solids" it only creates faces at 1m intervals. Using Sketchup's face.area gives the area of the face and I just average the areas of the adjacent faces to obtain the volume of that "slice" and write that out to a text file. That's all I thought you were looking for.

mac1 · 19 Jun 2011, 03:51

@jemagnussen said:

Hi again,

Come to think about it, it might be much easier to make the quantity take out by taking the volume of the first and last 1 m slice and enter the numbers in Excel and let it figure out the even distibution in between. Think that is an easier approach.

Question this. Do you have an spread sheet to do this and checked it. The vol as you step down your model may not be linear and you may have as much work as just using SU. I have not checked this however.

I'm working hard to use 3D visualization in my profession as Production Manager on construction projects, the model here is part of a new groyne, and being able to use Sketchup to produce and present the 3D visualization of the project and the steps in between is really a benefit for all parties involved.
The quantification would also look good if being able to present it visually in 3D, slice by slice, but it is probably overkill as an Excel sheet will just as well show the factual quantities and for the time being be most trustworthy for the parties involved as it is a sort of a defacto standard.
Op Site. I had help on previous post on getting estimates of grain vol in a silo bins and it is not real straight forward. Used EXCEL there but this is more complictaed.
Do you have to show each slice for visualization. May contention is once you have the work flow set then getting the vol of each slice can be done quickly. One of your problem areas seems to be getting the solid vol to run calculations. I think there are some plugins which can help. Namely make faces and ?? ( Need to find for you). Some time ago I ran a number of test on TIG's cal I ref above using the prismatoid approach as an easy check point and it is most certainly accurate enough for what you are doing. I am like wise certain the SU 8 included capability is accurate too.
For presentation using scenes to separate the 3 materials maybe useful.
Well get the plugin info and get back with you
Good Luck

Best regards
Jesper

jeff hammond · 19 Jun 2011, 04:50

@mac1 said:

Question this. Do you have an spread sheet to do this and checked it. The vol as you step down your model may not be linear and you may have as much work as just using SU. I have not checked this however.

the top two layers are linear.. the bottom one isn't.
[well, just via a spot check of averaging the two ends then checking the middle]

@unknownuser said:

I am like wise certain the SU 8 included capability is accurate too.

any reason why you're not upgrading to 8? (or at least have a 8 installed alongside 7 on your computer?)
no offense to TIG or anyone else that's ever written a volume plugin or boolean plugin but su8's solid calculations and booleans are superior to anything else out there.. the volume is updated in real time and i've yet to come across any inaccuracies. dunno, it's worth checking out.

@jemagnussen
here's the 3 layers all sliced up.. i guess i should of uploaded this along with the video seeing how it only took 10mins to make (including the macro setup time)

quantities_macro2.skp

i guess you could use this to check your spreadsheet against if you haven't done so already.

[Edit]- so i just tried doing a 'generate report' on the file and it's actually a very easy way to get the individual volumes in a spreadsheet (after they're sliced up).. the weird thing though is that the volumes were shown in inches instead of meters in my .csv&html outputs.. i'm not sure if that's due to some settings of mine or if they always come out like that.. in numbers (apple's version of excel), i just divided the cu.inches by 39.37009^3 to get it into meters..
here's a .xls with all the volumes in meters.. (not sure how well this is going to transfer into excel.. i tried to keep it super basic so it should work )

quantities.xls

mac1 · 19 Jun 2011, 14:38

Jeff
great work as usual
Ref Su8 upgrade. I don't need and will change over to free when my eval time runs out. At present my main use is as file converter.I do have both installed.

Lauren · 6 Aug 2011, 06:27

Personally, I use Zorro2 and I would suggest it to you as well judging from the tasks that you are in. From my experience, it is by far, one of the best tools out there that helped me slice models. It is very easy and user oriented as when compared with other tools.