Electrical Components
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Is there a plugin that will compute electrical systems in SketchUp? either the basic voltage, current, resistance. Or more complex equations, taking more variables into account?
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Isn't it amazing the different ways people want to use SketchUp?
I've thought (a little) about doing this - it's certainly possible. But I wonder if SU is really the best tool. Electrical circuits are not 3d objects, nor do I see any advantage to representing them as such.
Building a representation of a circuit in SU would be straight-forward; it is basically devices and nodes and connections: place components, define electrical characteristics (attributes), and define connections. Placing components and defining attributes can be done already; and a special tool could be made to define the connections. Once that is done, a model could be exported to a SPICE file format and analyzed. The analysis then parsed and added back into SU as labels, etc.
So yes it's possible, but not likely unless you are the one do it. I'm sure the members of the Dev forum would be happy to answer any questions were you to take on writing this plugin.
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I will amend slightly when I said I can see no purpose in representing a circuit in 3d.
I can see how it could make some great-looking visualizations for students.
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Thanks for the reply, I wanted to use it in solar array design, thinking maybe it could show real time output with the shade analysis...I haven't done any programming in years, and haven't used ruby ever, but i might have to plug away on it.
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I stand corrected - I can see that as a good application, and also do-able. I was thinking resistors and capacitors, etc.
But that won't change my answer much. Panels can be looked at as simple batteries, no? So you have a layout of panels connected in series or parallel. Assuming the panels are SketchUp Components, you can loop over the Model to find their quantity and location, and probably determine the connection based on position, type, and neighbors. Components can store attributes like their electrical characteristics which can be retrieved and used in the calculations.
That part seems fairly straight-forward.
The shade analysis might be troublesome. There are no built-in methods to determine where a shadow lies. We can get the model geometry, and the sun position and angle, then do some ray-casting; but I wouldn't know where to begin making the calculations.
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