Quantity survey ?

AndyG

Hi,

i have to compile a quantity survey of a building. Up to now i always used AutoCad + Excel and did this manually. This project however is way bigger and of more complex geometry (although all orthogonal) that i think it would be more efficient and less error-prone if i would model it in 3d and generate reports from that.

Here is what i have in mind exactly: i am only interested in the exterior parts of the building (walls, doors, windows, roofs etc.). The elements would have to have certain attributes, for example 'type of wall', orientation, dimension and type of doors and windows and so on. Then i would like to extract information out of the model, for example things like: area of all walls with orientation south, or number of windows of type x with dimension y that are located in a wall of type z with orientation north. Are there plugins that could help with things like that?

Is anyone using SketchUp for things like this? Do you think it is the right tool for this task?

Any hints appreciated,

Andy

beginner

Hi AndyG,
We are using BiMUp 5D.
The model has to be organised using Components and Groups and you will be able to extract quite a lot of info.

unearthed

Hi AndyG

put your SU version number and OS in your details - gets you better answers.

Get very familiar with making components and drawing cleanly.

A lot of counting discussions on here are furniture or fitout related.

You'll probably find you have to put a few different things together but
ComponentReporter++ v1.2 should get you started:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=147658#p147658

also a very recent discussion and plugin discussion re component counting:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=53966&p=489393&hilit=count+components#p489393

AndyG

Beginner: thanks for the tip. I have tried the BimUp5D plugin today. I am not sure if i am just not getting it and i dont understand the workflow, or if its just not suitable for my use-case.

For example, i have a building, and i want to calculate the area of the external wall-surface. If i understand this right, i have to make a component for every single face of the wall - since BimUp does not support area calculations for components with multiple faces. Then, i have to right-click every single face and use 'Define Area' on it manually.

Besides from this being tedious, I think its also quite a error-prone process - there is no way i can see i can visually check if i forgot a face. In my opinion this is not a reasonable process for more complex cases with multiple hundreds of faces.

Then i tried to calculate the building perimeter of a L-shape. Apparently it can do length and width, but i see no way to get the perimeter.

If you have any tips, id appreciate it.

unearthed: thanks for the link, i will check out component reporter. I have updated my profile.

AndyG

I think for areas, the easiest way to do what i want is to assign materials and then just right-click the material in the materials-window and get the area this way.

I dont know about length tho. Ideally, i would like to just draw lines on a layer, and then have SU sum up the lengths of all the lines on this specific layer. What would also be nice, if i could somehow highlight the all the lines on this layer, to visually check if i didnt forget any parts in the model. Anyone knows how to do this?

Regards,
Andy

aadbuild

Try Plusspec. You'll be able to do it they're

Krisidious

There are lots of ways to get the information, various plugins and addons some mentioned here and some not, also the built in methods of reporting. The most important thing is knowing that you're going to be doing it when you start your model and naming and grouping things properly. For instance you'd want components of columns, named well and organized accordingly. Whereas if you keep the baselines of trim all in one group and in one layer you'll be able to quickly figure out a board foot or linear bid number. Model smart.

SpaceDesign by Al Hart is another estimating addon.

SketchUp Extension Warehouse

Your library of custom third-party extensions created to optimize your SketchUp workflow.

(extensions.sketchup.com)

unearthed

@andyg said:

I dont know about length tho. Ideally, i would like to just draw lines on a layer, and then have SU sum up the lengths of all the lines on this specific layer. What would also be nice, if i could somehow highlight the all the lines on this layer, to visually check if i didnt forget any parts in the model. Anyone knows how to do this?

Regards,
Andy

If you look ½ way down this page http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=23991, TIG wrote me a script to add up hedge lengths from a separate line layer I was doing in the drawing - would that work for you?