Just thought I'd tell everyone we found no fix as such, but someone else on the team has the pro version of SketchUp and that has the export options we needed.

I don't understand the incompatibility between all these programmes but at least I have my problem sorted.

Maya hates double faces. I don't know any modelling programme that likes them. There's meant to be an option to remove them but it's not working. I'll go to their forum or maybe PolyCount and see what can I find out. I'll let you (and the world) know when I know.

I've never had much of a problem with ngons in Maya or UE4, unless animating (and of course UE4 will triangulate on import, but it seems to do it well). When I triangulate in Sketchup, unless this is a mistake I'm making for having done it so many times with so many settings, it seems to make far more triangles than necessary. One time I had it in Maya with about 20K tris, and now after triangulating in Sketchup it's 60K. Now, this could be for the error of the doubled faces, and the fact that I don't think at that time (when it was 20K in Maya) I had the faces with holes appearing. If that's the trouble then Sketchup's triangulating fine.

Whatever happens I'll post back here. And something will happen. I'm working on this since January and it's for a game I'm making, so I'll have this sorted one way or another.

Thanks a lot, my friend. I'll have a go from the Maya side of advice. I don't think it's a bug, though. I've always been warned against modelling faces with holes. I just thought that was for when a model would deform in animations, but it seems that was a misconception on my part.
I'll talk to them anyway, and if it's a bug I'll find out.

Thanks for all your help.

If I export single-sided as .dae Maya just almost can't even reckon the model (portions of it don't display depending on the camera view, and I can't check at the moment but I believe that was one of the settings that had Maya import single faces as tripled and quadrupled causing Z-fighting all over it), and of course the faces with holes don't import, as you'd expect. If I try to open this single-sided file in Open3Mod it gives an error and won't open it.

They're all doubled, and they display funny (I'll describe that in a second), so when I tell Maya to display face normals it appears as though every single face, including those that shouldn't be, has its normals facing outwards.

The first image is the way the .obj file looks normally in Maya (once 'display face normals' is on).

The second is what happens once I click on the model.

The third is what happens once I deselect the model.

The fourth is what happens once I move the camera in any way, reverting it back to the way it looks in the first image.

Now, what's happening is every face is doubled, and the face that's immediately visible is facing the correct way, which I found by deleting faces and watching the normal indicator disappear, whilst the doubled face is orientated the opposite way, as if to represent what in SketchUp is by default the blue material.

Wow, it certainly helped. Thanks.

So, now in Maya, all faces with holes appear, but every face in the model is now doubled. I have to tick 'export two-sided faces' in Sketchup or it won't load in Open3Mod. Does Sketchup always export the faces doubled or is this another importer problem? If so, perhaps I ought to find a Maya forum.

Thanks. Here it is.

Thanks, I've downloaded that one now and it's lovely.

Any advice in that case on getting this file into Maya or UE4 looking the way it does in Open3Mod? (I'm really, really happy that it's not exporting the way I thought it was, you've no idea.)

EDIT: Hadn't realised this thing was a converter as well. Trying that now.

Thanks very much.

What programme is that? I can't get it into Maya or UE4 without looking like a right mess. But the exporter says no-thing about it.

About the ngons, how do people normally do windows? especially rounded ones?

I realise it's bad modelling practise to model faces with holes, but I always thought that was something to do with animation. I have a lot of windows on this house and every single wall that has a window disappears when I export the model in a .dae format.

I'm sure people have modelled Sketchup houses for external use before, and I have to assume they have windows. How am I meant to do it?

This is going into a game engine, so another somewhat related question is that now I realise a rounded window creätes a huge number of triangles. Is there a standard way of doing this more cleanly?

And finally, when I look at the model in Maya or Unreal Engine 4, seemingly no matter which export options I choose, there is a great amount of Z-fighting, as if all my faces were doubled (I've tried both ticking and unticking the option to export two-sided faces). In fact, I can click on pretty much any face (in Maya, not Sketchup) and delete it to reveal one beneath it and eliminate the Z-fighting. And then I need to reverse the face usually. And yes, my whole model has only the white side exposed.

Anyone interested, on another forum someone's explained to me that in the first image what I've labelled #2, the white squares, is a dormer. That makes sense to me with what Dave said earlier about #3. I've actually e-mailed the UK National Trust to see what they could tell me about that round yoke. I'll post back with their answer in case anyone's interested.

Driven: Thanks for the picture. If I don't find any thing I'll just put bells like those there.

Stfo1: I know there's stairs there (in fact they're already modelled), that they're for servants, and that servants were not to use the main stairs or really even be seen if avoidable. In #4 I'm just talking about the 'hooks' on the floor plan. I wouldn't expect hooks to be labelled on a floor plan, but neither would I expect bells to be. However, if you look at driven's original post here you can see the floor plan I've based mine on, and whatever publication that is doesn't even have the symbol despite being in the printing I have. Very curious.

But what's holding me back is that round bit coming out of the scullery, labelled #1 on the first image I've posted. Would you have any idea what it is? It's not a copper.

I'm sorry, stfo1, but I'm not sure I follow. Are you saying the hook-like symbols mark the top of the stair? I'm not trained to read floor plans but I would intuit that rather than vertical they'd be horizontal. If that's what they are, altough I could think of a few better symbols than those if it were my choice.

Look at this!
http://0.tqn.com/d/architecture/1/S/r/i/1/scullery-3069961-crop.jpg

Any chance that round thing I was talking about is an oven?

It certainly is interesting. I hope anyone that indeed has insight into what I've said in my last Sketchup post, will tell me, as I need it, but I don't mind an interesting discussion in the meantime.

So, I agree with most of what you've said there, and I take your word on the rest.
In my book, as was common practise, the protagonist and her family sleep with several animals inside the cottage, as this aids in heating the place. It was that and a fire. The fire didn't really cost you on a farm, but you certainly worked for it. I can't imagine the ordeal of keeping a fire in all them fireplaces you sees in a mansion.

On the topic of toilets now, would anyone care to explain to me what apparatus was common when? My understanding is that indoor plumbing wasn't uncommon by the 1880s, at least in Britain and Ireland (probably not in the rural parts, though). By what process did they achieve hot water and when did our modern process come about of relieving ourselves indoors and flushing? How about what's called a bathroom or washroom in these floor plans? What was in there?

Isn't that the truth. A fair few shoddy buildings being put up these days. As technology improves, cheaper ways of doing things come about, and a good half the time, cheaper won't last.

Indeed, Calstock. That can certainly be some change. I'm doing a lot of research on this type of thing lately as I'm writing a novel about an 1870s Donegal farm girl that goes into service in a big mansion, as well as working on the computer game that this floor plan will be for. So, I'm finding out a lot and it's interesting. It's the sort of thing I never used to think about that much. I always liked it but hadn't really given much thought to the complexity of it.

Thanks very much, everyone. It's fantastic that ye feel so inclined to help. I hope to return the favour to some other novices on this forum one day.

So, I've gone through the whole book and put together all the plans where I personally noticed this yoke we're discussing or something that could potentially be the same. I may have missed a couple but this is about as good as it'll get I imagine. (And I've apparently neglected to include the plan for Bignell House.) Am I correct in seeing doors going into whatever this thing is? If so, why is no-thing indicated on the outside for picking up the waste without entering the house as Dave R has suggested? That seemed the most likely suggestion to me but this bit is puzzling.

2. and 9. seem to be exactly the same as Bignell House, a rounded shape totally outsdide of any buildings but connected to one, usually a scullery.

3. is rounded but within square walls and it comes out of the scullery. I thought it was indoors in a different building but the fuel shed is where it goes and is really outdoors.

1., 4., 7., and 8. are irregularly shaped but I believe the same device is implied. 4. seems the only one of these that protrudes totally out of the building. Interestngly, in 1. and 7. the device in question is in the wash-house and not the scullery. Could it be a different device in that case?

5. and 6. are rather more oblong, and 5. rather curiosuly seems to be indoors and not adjacent to an external wall, whereas in line with the rest of them, 6. is at the outer wall and could be outside.

6. and 11. are different but near the end of this I wondered are they fulfilling the same function. I'm talking about the rectangular items against the outer walls. The first image has this as well in the scullery.

driven: I think it looks interesting and mysterious on the map so I'll keep it and do something with it. It's for a computer game, a horror one no less, so a bit of mystery is good.

Calstock: In a way it is surprising, but at the same time the rooms are quite big, and in addition to what Dave has said, the space required to do all these tasks is indicative of the number of people that needed to do them, hence the high number of bedrooms (some of which are for guests as well). And considering that these are generally homes and countryhouses for the wealthy, this was by no means standard for the majority. Many families had a single room for living, cooking, sleeping and any thing else that you'd like to do indoors.

Dave: never seen either programme but I'd love to. I should save the names for when I have time to watch something. I've read Margaret Powell's books on domestic service, and they were positively fascinating. Her accounts start from the 1920s but she often draws comparisons to Victorian living, and mentions what had improved, or occassionally grown worse.

@calstock said:

I did Google the Architect the other day to look for other plans and I think he used the circular feature elsewhere. This may be a line of research for you - look for other plans by the Architect because they tend to repeat favoured features in other projects. The hope being the features are better detailed elsewhere.

Thanks, Calstock. What did you find? I've not found much besides what's already in that book. He uses it again I think in the one I have attached here, in the scullery.