[Plugin] LSS Zone

kirill2008

Thanks to all for kind words!

"Not sure about the practical purposes of this graph?"
I thought that that was a question, to which you'll give us an ingenious use of the graph later in the video, but it was a statement!

That's right, this graph is only for aesthetic pleasure for now . There is no any practical utilization implemented for it in current version...

@takesh h said:

kirill2008, I use your LSS Chrono all the time.

@takesh h said:

The only issue I have with it so far is the way the plugin understands the floor area of rooms by tracing point by point. It's much easier if we can simply select the floor plane to designate the floor of rooms, don't you think?

The point is that the ability to pick a floor face is actually already present in the current version. This feature wasn't demonstrated in a video (as well as some other interesting features).

I would like also to inform everyone about some issues, which were found recently almost immediately after publication:

error raises in case if creating zone of a zero height
grouping of string fields just adds new strings without any separator (see attachment)
'List Template' dialog sometimes fail to refresh results of grouping/sorting properly

The mentioned issues will be fixed in the first minor update, which is scheduled in three nearest weeks.

Krisidious

@unknownuser said:

The point is that the ability to pick a floor face is actually already present in the current version. This feature wasn't demonstrated in a video (as well as some other interesting features).

mitcorb

The quick pick room floor area is a good request. All you have to solve is how to differentiate between the entire floor plate component or group and that of the room. Your demo of floor area tracing reminds me of the Autocad command "solid" for shading or filling a 2d area.(what an inept name?). Perhaps there is a "boundary seeking" function in Ruby that respects coincident group edges- or...

kirill2008

@mitcorb said:

All you have to solve is how to differentiate between the entire floor plate component or group and that of the room.

Well that sounds challenging

But actually my dream is to solve even more challenging task. The point is that tracing zones' contours is not that time consuming after all in contrast with tracing of openings. In addition to that, there is no clear way in current version to generate a zone of a room with sloped walls and/or ceiling (for now it is only possible to edit zone's elements manually and recalculate zone's quantitative attributes). So the question, that hunts me, is how to differentiate between room's internal space and an entire space outside a room. Besides it would be nice to be able to "fill" automatically an internal space of any possible complex topology (sloped or curved walls, floor, ceiling). Of course it will be necessary to detect and take in account somehow holes (openings) in bounding surfaces as well.
I'm afraid it might take a while to implement such logic, but I don't say it's impossible as a matter of principle

Krisidious

Mit, Just separate the rooms with a line and hide the line... I do it for flooring normally but even if it's the same for square footage.

srx

Besides automatic finding of areas, just one more thing - binding area geometry to structure. So if the structure was changed, areas are also changed ...just kidding... This is one small step for a man, but the huge lip for SU BIM! Thank you Kiril.
(Manually I would derive it from existing geometry this way: select structure(walls, floor, ceiling), copy it far away, explode it, intersect with each other, select inner surfaces, make a groups on layers (walls, floor, ceiling), and move it back to the original location).

mitcorb

I just remembered about Voronoi cells. Maybe this has some application in defining/seeking areas? But I don't know, didn't look for how any Voronoi operation would treat a region with a hole in it.

kirill2008

@srx said:

Besides automatic finding of areas, just one more thing - binding area geometry to structure. So if the structure was changed, areas are also changed

Sure why not
More seriously, I think that if automatic zone creation will be finally implemented somehow, then implementation of automatic refreshing of zones will be more or less easy to carry out.

@srx said:

This is one small step for a man, but the huge lip for SU BIM! Thank you Kiril.

Thank you!
Maybe I would rather say quite the opposite I mean, LSS Zone is not that big thing on the scale of Sketchupverse. This extension is a personal significant achievement (maybe), but it utilizes only one certain set of Sketchup's endless range of possibilities.
Dealing with SU API may give some insights into Sketchup's thrilling nature. But the amount of methods is not the point, the point is the core ideology. Something done right in it

@mitcorb said:

I just remembered about Voronoi cells. Maybe this has some application in defining/seeking areas? But I don't know, didn't look for how any Voronoi operation would treat a region with a hole in it.

The only solution I can imagine for now is to ask a user to define somehow what to treat as a hole. Still have no clear idea how to do the rest logic though...

kirill2008

Small announcement: automatic contour tracing implementation is in progress now. Here is a preview of room's contour tracing process:

http://youtu.be/_61w3bsJmf4

pilou

Seems very useful for architecture!

mitcorb

Hi, Kirill:
I like your latest innovation.

kirill2008

@mitcorb said:

I like your latest innovation.

@unknownuser said:

Seems very useful for architecture!

Thank you guys!
I would like to mention that I personally use this extension heavily for my own practical purposes (architectural design) so chances are it may be useful for other architects as well. At least I hope so

facer

plugin - LSS Zone Used in conjunction with LSS Arch Lite

Use of LSS Zone for concept sketch design.
The following comments relate to this use of LSS Zone for concept Sketch Design.

LSS Zone can be improved for Sketch Design if the drawing of a Zone is similar to drawing walls in LSS Arch Lite.
At present, it is difficult to determine if a right angle has been drawn in LSS Zone. I like the firm snapping and
guide symbols used in LSS Arch Lite, these would help in LSS Zone.

Using LSS Zone in the Sketch Design phase gives the following advantages:

Quick "block modelling" of required rooms or zones
The Client's Brief can be checked quickly in regards floor areas and hence costs (based on $/sq. metre)
The "volume massing study with LSS Zone" allows quick insights to the evolving "shape" which then illustrates likely issues as height (setback requirements) and the sun (shadow)

Your present focus for LSS Zone is for the analysis of rooms for multi-residential buildings.
The first time user of LSS Zone is most likely doing smaller scale projects.
The use of LSS Zone in the Sketch Design phase could be of interest if they were
alerted to its potential use.

Regards,
Ray

kirill2008

Hello Ray,
I decided to copy my answer in this thread as well. Here is LSS Arch Lite thread where I posted basically the same reply.
I agree about problems with UI in LSS Zone (lack of direction lock using Shift key while drawing and editing for example etc). I added recently a "Zone" tool to a full version of LSS Arch. It basically uses the same logic for zone object as free LSS Zone extension, but utilizes UI logic of LSS Arch (so zone tool behaves basically the same way as other LSS Arch tools, direction lock is available etc). I tested how zone tool works in LSS Arch during a project, which I'm currently involved in at work, and I'm mostly happy with results (I revealed a couple of minor problems in zone tool inside LSS Arch though so fixing is in progress right now and nearest minor update of LSS Arch will contain those fixes).
So now I have an idea to publish new commercial LSS Zone Pro extension, which would utilize UI logic of LSS Arch and drop support of a free LSS Zone extension, because I'm afraid I have no ability to continue developing of freeware projects (at least at the moment). Such new extension can be used in combination with LSS Arch Lite (such combination would provide ability to trace quickly closed spaces bounded by walls). I hope this plan will come true someday.

Sincerely,
Kirill