Sketchup pros?

[Jacob Lott]

I’m looking for anyone who knows how to do programing… mainly writing plugins for sketchup. I’m trying to write some really helpful plugins that would help do estimating but have no idea how to do so. If anyone could help me or point me in the right direction I would be forever grateful.

[Bob Luther]

go to http://www.sketchucation.com it is a forumn with the greatest wealth of talent and the best ruby script writers in the workl. free to register and the people there are incredibly helpful, many of the things you are probibly think of are already availible or you can find people who love a challenge and love to write new scripts (look fo chris fullmer – he is a great script writer and very connected in the sketchup world, and is also in Landscape Architecture)

Bob

[Jacob Lott]

well thank you very much… the plugins are probably not out there yet however… they are quite specific to the company i am with, but thank you for the information. i will go and hunt now

[Bob Luther]

what are you trying to do, what kind of take offs are you doing? what programs are you using AutoCAD 2010 & Sketchup Pro 7? Maybe there is something that I can help you find, if possible please discribe your model and your takes offs.

[Jacob Lott]

well here is the situation.. I am currently working for ValleyCrest Landscape maintenance and am working with a guy doing estimating. i have introduced to them sketchup and how it can drastically reduce their time and effort in gathering sq. footages by doing the linework in sketchup then clicking on faces to tell what the area is. (the models would be considered all jobs they have: ex: shopping centers, big estates..just like a beefed-up version of a plan drawing, nothing 3-D at this time )
from that i now want a plugin that will tell how many hours will be needed on specific areas such as planters and mowing by clicking a surface and assigning a command on what type of area it is, have it do some simple math based on sq ft and type of equipment… does this still make sense or answer you question? or no?
p.s.- i am using sketchup pro 7 and autocad 2009, mainly just sketchup for this… and google earth to pull images of properties into sketchup

[Bob Luther]

you could easily make a matrix in excel to calculate all of the hour and make a simple projection but I am assuming that you would like to have the digital plan and then tag that plan and get an instant estimate of time, cost, labor etc. so if I understand you correctly you will bring in the Google earth image into SketchUp and then create faces out of the various landscape areas, you want to be able to click on any of these faces and have the computer kick out sq footage, type of labor, type of equipment, number of man hours to maintain. I know this is not the answer you are looking for but maybe you need to look at a separate software package, I think you are correct that a program can be written to do this but I also think that software exists that can do something similar, LandFX has some features that can be modified to calc areas and assign values normally cost or unit density, wow this is a cool idea I will look into it and see if I can dig anything up or come up with any ideas.

[Bob Luther]

look into the cost estimating functions of LandFX. video tutorial page linked below look at the cost estimating video.
http://www.landfx.com/videos.php
Bob

[Jacob Lott]

i’m glad you think this would work, the LandFX thing is really cool but has one problem… no one knows how to use autocad or even LandFX for that matter. This is the whole reason i need it in sketchup so that the monkeys running sketchup can push a few buttons and it will spit out what they need. this is all new to everyone here so it cant be to hard for them ya know?

[Bob Luther]

does it have to be sketchup to out put the final information? could you make the map and then nam and color thefaces and then input the square footage into excell to do the computations via formulas? this way you print out the map with square footage and then you enter the square footage into the spreadsheet and it would pop the info out. just a thought I like the idea that it could be done with sketchup but just in case that might be another idea.

[Bob Luther]

I understand your pain!

[Jennifer de Graaf]

have you been to Smustard.com??

[Jacob Lott]

i have, they have a volume plugin but i cant find anyone who has anything like this

[Jacob Lott]

i think it would be ideal to have all in sketchup…but really, there are some plugins i have that will do it all in sketchup then automatically insert it into an excel spread sheet. so I’m pretty sure it can be done, I’m just not that savvy in programing. i am trying to cut out/shorten the steps to getting the numbers i want by having it compute all in sketch up, maybe i’m just being lazy and selfish 🙂

[Chris Fullmer]

Hi Jacob, yes that kind of thing is possible to do in a Sketchup plugin. There are a few different ways to implement it. I think the best way depends on your workflow. But I have some ideas. I could write a very simple version for you. Maybe something that just export all the surface area of different materials used in a model. Then it would be easy to use a color coding system in Sketchup. Then run the plugin and it could output the area associated with each color. Then you could take that into a spreadsheet.

I’m not good with formatting text output in Ruby. But I could get the data for sure, and then you would just need to plug it into a spreadsheet manually (well, copy and paste).

So PM or email me or something. I’ll see if I can get a quick and dirty version of the script up and running.

Chris

[Bob Luther]

Chris you are in the world of Land8, I knew you would be the guy to get in touch with.

[Author]

Posts