Medeek Wall Plugin
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@bob james said:
Is the current version in the download at:
Correct. Version 0.7.4
I will probably roll another rev. tonight once I wrap up the the work on the tee intersection algorithm.
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When you delete walls the cutouts on the the top plates are left as you can see in the image below, but a rebuild of the wall will heal those unnecessary cutouts:
Please keep sending in your bugs and feature requests. I am going to keep working on this plugin full time as long as the SU community continues to support me in this endeavor.
My goal is to have a robust, flexible and full featured architectural design tool that a lot of the SU designers and even DIY'ers can quickly pick up and use.
I am trying to figure out some sort of way that I could offer this at a drastically reduced price or even free so that anyone could take advantage of it but at the same time maintaining enough revenue so that I can keep developing it full time. Perhaps these two goals/objectives are mutually exclusive.
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The tee intersection algorithm has been revamped and is now properly cutting out top plates when walls intersect at these intersections:
When a wall gets rebuilt (ie. edited, moved, opening added, or switched between modes) the tee intersection algorithm is run and any intersecting walls will be detected (any walls that are touching the wall in question and have a "tee corner" configuration at that end).
What this means is that if you manually move an intersecting wall and slide it along the main wall and then rebuild the main wall the top plate will automatically update with the correct cut out as shown above.
This update will be rolled into rev. 0.7.5.
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I think it's a big mistake to keep discounting the price of your plugins. In my view the user adoption will follow the feature/UI completeness of the plugin(s).
For example: the only reason that I have yet to buy the truss plugin, is that the type of truss I needed wasn't feature complete enough — I would have happily paid double or triple the price if all of the current features had been available for that truss at the time. (they may well be now)
I will buy your wall plugin once it's stable and out of beta, and given the cost of similarly deep, professionally-developed plugins (eg Garry K's Cabinet Maker), you should be looking at raising your price not lowering it.
Maybe have a simple version at a lower price (without advanced options) for homeowners designing a backyard shed, but IMHO you should be charging at least $50-100 for the fully featured pro version. Maybe a $99 intro bundle for all 3 — Wall/Truss/Foundation.
Then, when you add engineering specification features that you've discussed, add that version at double the price. For a pro designer, the cost will pay itself in the first project.
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@db11 said:
Maybe a $99 intro bundle for all 3 — Wall/Truss/Foundation.
You are probably spot on with most of what you have said.
I've come to realize for me its not about the money it is simply about being able to do what I love doing, and for some reason I've really come to love programming these types of SketchUp plugins. However, the reality is that I need to somehow make enough to survive and hence the necessary "evil" of having to charge, what I consider, high prices for these plugins.
To be perfectly honest the Kickstarter Campaign has brought me to this point, without it and the 41 generous backers I never would have been able to devote the necessary time to even get this project off of the ground. I started programming in earnest on the actual plugin on April 5th and the initial beta was released on May 25th. I think I've been able to accomplish a fair bit of programming in this rather short span of time.
The plugin is in fair shape, it is mostly there but still missing a few major features and probably needs at least another two to three weeks of intense scrutiny and subsequent fixes. I am systematically going through my list, knocking things out and checking them off.
As you suggest uptake of the plugin is probably being hampered by the fact that it is still in a beta stage and not as fine tuned as it needs to be.
To keep going I somehow need to bolster sales (even temporarily), this will buy me a few more weeks of time to keep my focus on this project. With that being said I am liking the idea of some sort of bundle deal or promotion that I could possibly run for a week or two, just long enough to get me in a position so that I can continue forward.
Perhaps a deal where if you purchase the Wall Plugin at full price the Truss and Foundation Plugin are included. If you already own either of these two plugins then your license renewal dates for these other plugins are extended out the appropriate amounts. Also have this package deal retroactively applied to all Wall Plugin customers (within the last 60 days) so as to be fair to everyone who has purchased the plugin thus far.
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@medeek said:
However, the reality is that I need to somehow make enough to survive and hence the necessary "evil" of having to charge, what I consider, high prices for these plugins.
It's always a challenge to build a passion into a self-sustaining business, and not to let short-term need short-circuit longer-term thinking.
You've created a lot of value with these plugins and you shouldn't feel the least bit guilty about charging an appropriate price for them. Those that use SU Pro as a/the primary tool for their business will have no problem investing in plugins that increase SU's capability and/or efficiency and should be your primary target market — for both pricing strategy and requirements capture. Any additional revenue that you pick up from the hobby market would simply be the icing on the cake, but you shouldn't let addressing that market derail your overall focus.
Accordingly, I think that (eventually) having two versions — Hobby/Pro — could help with the challenge of expanding the user base while still generating sufficient funds to sustain the effort. (All the development effort goes to Pro with Hobby as just a feature-limited version of same).
The only caveat would be that the larger your user base, the greater the demand for user support. When you consider the truism that the customers who spend the least/know the least also tend to demand the most, you'd have to consider carefully whether directly addressing the Hobby market would be worth the potential loss of time/focus. (at this point in time)
I also like the idea of doing a time-limited promotion (to generate some needed near-term funds) much better than setting the long-term price too low, and then being stuck with it.
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Version 0.7.5 - 05.31.2018
- Fixed a bug with the callout positioning method to allow for the correct placement of wall opening text.
- Intersecting walls now cut through the top plate of the primary walls at tee intersections.
- Wall cladding and sheathing materials option now added to wall creation tool.
- Default behavior for the Wall Mode parameter added the Walls tab of the global settings (Line or Polyline).
- Added DensGlass
sheathing material to the sheathing tab of the global settings. - Began the addition of tooltips to every parameter within the global settings.
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June 2018 - Medeek Wall Plugin Promotion
In order to help kick off the new Medeek Wall Plugin I will be running a promotion from June 1 thru June 15.
All orders of the Wall Plugin will also include a free two year license of the Truss Plugin ($50 value) and a free one year license of the Foundation Plugin ($25 value).
If you have previously purchased either of these other plugins then your serial expiration date for each plugin will be extended by the time periods given above.
To take advantage of this offer, once you have purchased the wall plugin, simply email me with your client ID or username and that you would like to take advantage of the June 2018 Promo.
For clients that have already purchased the Wall Plugin, you can also take advantage of this offer by emailing me directly as above and I will add the Truss Plugin and Foundation Plugin to your client account or extend your serials as mentioned above.
This offer is only good until June 15, 2018. All Medeek Wall Plugin orders made on June 16, 2018 (PST) or later will not be eligible for this time limited offer.
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Looking at garage doors this morning and I have my ideas on how one should trim these out but I am wondering if the rest of community is inline with my thinking.
Feel free to email me or post on the board a garage door jamb detail/section on how you would like these put together.
I'm also going to add in an advanced framing menu for the garage door option wherein the user can specify the parameters for portal framing the opening, however I may not attack this one until later since there are much bigger fires to put out at the moment.
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@unknownuser said:
To take advantage of this offer, once you have purchased the wall plugin, simply email me with your client ID or username and that you would like to take advantage of the June 2018 Promo.
I've just purchased the Wall plugin, but cannot find your email address
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@bob james said:
@unknownuser said:
To take advantage of this offer, once you have purchased the wall plugin, simply email me with your client ID or username and that you would like to take advantage of the June 2018 Promo.
I've just purchased the Wall plugin, but cannot find your email address
Thank-you for your purchase and you support of this endeavor.
My email is nathan@medeek.com
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Thank you.
Done
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Version 0.7.5
Made some test walls with inside corners so the walls would be drawn on the outside of the path and had two problems:
I expected the gypsum to be on the inside and the sheathing to be on the outside. This is what I got with the gypsum not only not on the inside, but buried in the 2x4:
And the corners are offset so they did not meet.
Note also that the wood has no texture even though the Auto Assign Materials was set to "Yes".
With the blizzard of inputs, I've probably set more than one thing wrong, but have no idea what.
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Since nearly all the homes in the California South Coast have stucco walls, can you add a flat plane cladding to which I could add the appropriate stucco material?
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@ Bob James:
You have hit on two very important and interesting topics/issues with the plugin, I will do my best to address them both here:
1.) The wall justification (front, middle, back) is something I have been treating as a basic property or parameter of the wall. This morning as I really put on my thinking cap I came to the realization that this is not so. The justification is only really needed during the wall creation process and once the wall is created there is no justification, the wall just is.
With that being said I need to rework the wall creation tool slightly, it shouldn't be too big of an issue but will require some serious and careful thought. For now please only use the "FRONT" justification, the other two options are flawed by their very nature.
This may take me a couple days to fully think this through and come up with the correct solution. Please have patience with me while I work this one out, I need to do it slowly and carefully and get it right.
2.) I am not satisfied with the current system of applying materials to the wall assembly via the plugin. Since the plugin completely rebuilds the entire wall panel on any edit or addition of windows or doors it must somehow save the material being used for each element (group) within the attribute library. It is already setup to do this and works quite well.
One can also use the edit menu to select from a static list of materials.
I think a few things could help to make this better:
A.) The plugin can look at the currently defined materials in the model and give the user the ability to select from any of these materials as well as the hard coded materials within the wall edit menu.B.) Perhaps and observer or something should be setup so that if the user manually opens up the wall assembly group and assigns a material to the cladding, sheathing or gypsum for a given wall panel this information is then updated within the attribute library.
C.) Provide an interface within the global settings where additional hard coded materials can be added to the existing ones. The user would upload an image, assign a name and specify the X and Y scaling.
In the meantime if you could send me over at least one stucco material that you commonly use, I would love to add it to the plugin as a permanent material option
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Here is the stucco color for my house:
Of course, it needs a normal map or a bunp map when I render it in Thea.
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@bob james said:
Here is the stucco color for my house:
Of course, it needs a normal map or a bunp map when I render it in Thea.[attachment=0:2ixeuzqv]<!-- ia0 -->texture4.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:2ixeuzqv]
Do you have a name or color you would like me to assign to this stucco.
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My intent is to add in the portal framing option into the garage door module.
Yes, it will comply with the IRC standard but also give the user a few more options to further customize it. Portal framing is actually much more complex than just the prescriptive examples given in the IRC or IBC, one can engineer these things to be quite a bit more substantial, as I have done in the past.
Take a look at this example below:
http://design.medeek.com/resources/PFH/PFH_CALCULATOR.pdf
Here is a rather stout wall engineered with two portal frames and a shearwall (this was in a high wind and seismic location):
The plugin should not only be able to draw this but also perform the engineering checks as well.
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@bob james said:
Here is the stucco color for my house:
Of course, it needs a normal map or a bunp map when I render it in Thea.[attachment=0:3jwkvlpz]<!-- ia0 -->texture4.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:3jwkvlpz]
It should be noted that once a material is defined by the plugin in SketchUp there is nothing stopping the user from editing that material and changing it up.
Once a material is assigned and created the plugin does not try to recreate or change the material so technically you could assign your cladding to red brick for example and then simple change it to whatever you like. The important thing is that the plugin is looking for the name of the material when it regens the model, it doesn't care about all of the other properties of the material in question.
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Just to prove my previous point about customizing materials I've edited the medeek_lumber material name that I use for all of the framing and applied a CMU image to it.
I then set the wall framing at 8 inches thick and switched to the no framing mode so that the walls are represented only by solid groups.
Voila, CMU walls:
If there is an external brick facade with an air gap, the cladding can be turned on and air gap adjusted accordingly.
Even though I have not specifically set this plugin up for CMU or block walls theoretically one could use it in this manner to model this type of construction. The "NO FRAMING" mode may be quite a bit more useful than I originally thought.
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