Here's the lot from Google Earth. The lot lines are nowhere close to being accurate. I could not figure out how to edit a path. After I drew it 3 times from scratch, I gave up. I won't be getting a survey until closing.

lot13.skp

Hi All. Mike Lucey had a good idea for this thread. He hooked me. So did EscapeArtist - I've started a blog.

As I was mentioned in this thread (http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=179&t=36503), I'm buying a piece of property on which I'll build a house. My wife (Connie) and I have a lot of ideas we want to incorporate into the house.

To not have to repeat myself, here's a link to the blog I started: http://web.me.com/toddburch/NewSite/Lot_13_Blog/Lot_13_Blog.html

The exterior style of house we like can be seen here: http://www.texascasualcottages.com/

We're thinking the size of the house will be roughly 2400 square feet. Deed restrictions say that the house has to face the road (can be skewed some, with approval) and must be at least 60' wide, not including porches or garage. We're thinking 1 story, but might go 2.

I'll be building a workshop too. 1200 square feet seems good. I'm almost thinking 2 story on the shop too, and put the shop upstairs, and leave the downstairs open to be used for family gatherings (under cover) but with the ability to open it all up for breezes. An upstairs shop would require some type of open-platform elevator for equipment and materials.
I'd like it to look a bit barn-ish.

The house will have a garage - either attached or with a dog-trot.

I suspect there's not a lot to know for any productive doodling yet. I'll post pictures later (via the blog) of ideas that we would like to incorporate into the house and property. If you have ideas or suggestions for improvements - please share!

Thanks, Todd

Thanks for all the replies.

I've looked at the web-portfolios of a couple recommended architects, and both had more than enough modern / highly contemporary styling to push us away very quickly. Plus, some of the color choices on their sites screamed at us. (Reminded us of an HGTV episode where your neighbors (who don't like you) come in and paint.)

(http://www.dkarc.com/default.aspx and http://gsmarchitects.net/residential.html)

The search is still on. We like the exterior look of these: http://www.texascasualcottages.com/ but will probably go stone instead of cement board. We also like the wood interior walls. We'll go hardwoods on the floors too, and we'll do lots of built-ins. We do know a lot of what we want, and we want to maximize our opportunity for views and house layout. The house will face (basically) east, which is probably not optimum, as we'll do most of the entertaining in back, in the hot afternoon sun. Big porches are in order.

I don't have a blog, but may consider one when I start writing checks. It's a big time commitment.

Let's take up a fund and buy that boy some casters.

I'm in the process of purchasing some property. On this property, I plan on building a house. I don't want to just find a builder and pick from a limited set of plans and build "his" house. I want to build "my" house. I want to incorporate features and tastes that I like, but I recognize I do need assistance with tying the whole together in a homogenous package, need help with placement of the house on the lot, designing the house to take advantage of views, prevailing breezes, septic, well, driveway, etc., etc., etc. Tons of decisions.

How much can an architect advise? I need so much more than "house plans".

How much does an architect cost?

I met with a landscape designer today, and she pretty much said "figure the house out, and then I can help". Does this sound right?

@Kris: Ah. I guess that could be confusing!

Oh, I did make contact with the factory sales guy for my area. Seems they are all custom-built to order, and their MO is "if you need a window to fit your house, as opposed to building your house around your window, call us for your fenestration needs".

Yes, it's the link that Rich posted. Posting a link totally escaped me. I guess I was working under the assumption that if someone had worked with them, they would know who they were!

Has anybody used these products? Their web site seems to convey they care.

Thanks, Todd (shopping for all the pieces to build his custom home...)

Here's the way to process data in your file following the END directive using the DATA constant.

DATA.each('\n') {|t| puts t } 

puts "....done." ; 

__END__
Programmers
Todd Texas Homely 
Chris California Handsome 

That'll work.

I have done the level thing. Works fine.

And I've worked with a lot of XML documents at my day job too. (XSL, XSLT, XPath, XML Schemas (XSD), DTDs, etc.)

I've used it with Javascript too (parsing documents, extracting nodes, etc.)

Quite a handy language.

Looks good david, but it doesn't satisfy

@unknownuser said:

(b) You want the pathstring to look "correct", having the split on the nearest '/' near the middle of the string.

def path_knife(path,max=60)
	path = File.expand_path(path)
	if path.length > max
		s = []
		minlen = path.length
		path.gsub(/\//) {|piece| 
			len = ($`.length - $'.length).abs 
			if len < minlen then 
				s = [ $`, $'] 
				minlen = len 
			end 
		}   
		return "#{s[0]}/\n#{s[1]}" 
	else # leave it as one line
		return "#{path}"
	end
end # def
 
puts path_knife("C;/Program Files/Google/Google SketchUp 8/Plugins/test/error/NoMemoryError.rb")

Can you post a small, failing test case?

@unknownuser said:

ps. funny how I joined SCF exactly 1day and 10hours later

Looks like exactly 22 hours to me.

You can put your javascript in a try / catch block.

Also, since you are on a Mac, you can enable the development tools for Safari through Preferences -> Advanced, and then go to Develop -> Start Debugging Javascript to get a console up.

It doesn't work with WebDialog dialogs, but if your html is structured to load outside of SketchUp (or you can comment out SU specific stuff) then you can test the majority of your logic in a native browser before adding the SU stuff back in piecemeal.

See my first post - I already reported.

Ah! This is great. I had no idea. When I wrote progressbar, I could not spell Mac. And since I've moved to the Mac - I have never re-profiled. I will adjust the logic in progressbar to be a better citizen on the Mac.

I would have liked to have responded sooner, but I worked all weekend 'til the wee hours. Thank you all for your input and analysis. I would not have guessed it was the status bar updates. I have commented on the Ruby API doc.

Todd

That's painful.

Look for a convex hull algorithm.

Yes, that's not all it needs.... It's getting a rewrite too.