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Re: Sweet Home 3D 4.0
This weekend, the Beta 19 brings more translation updates, and some improvements for sloping ceilings support. At first, I was almost about to remove this feature in version 4.0, because it brings too often some misunderstandings from new users when they include a small wall in a room or don't understand how it works, and also because it didn't support multiple slopes for a room. But finally, I kept it because nevertheless, it's still able to compute complex ceiling surfaces as long as their points are more or less coplanar (i.e. belong to the same plane). As soon as the points are not coplanar, there shouldn't be more than 2 slopes and their shape shouldn't be too complicated. I even fixed a bug that could happen when some room points were aligned, and added support for ceilings at the border of a round sloping wall.
The attached example shows in red the cases that still fail. There's very little chance that it works one day for these, and you'll have to find workarounds (for more than 2 slopes, you just have to create more rooms).
---------------------------------------- SlopingCeillingsTest.sh3d
(5970 bytes)
(Download count: 2349)
(Tests of various sloping ceilings)
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 4.0
And another idea: don't recalculate the ceiling after every change, but make a Recalculate button, just as for the walls around a room. That way you can fool the program a bit: draw the walls in such a way that the ceiling looks good, then change the walls, but not the ceiling.
Hans
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Hans
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 4.0
I would enable this nice mechanism when there exists only one way of spanning a ceiling (e.g. 2nd from left in top row, or second from top in first column).
However, in some complex situations one can do it in more distinct ways. I would disable the mechanism if different strategies of triangulation result in different ceilings.
The mechanism doesn't work fine for low walls.
the intended ceiling is flat.
And sometimes ceiling covers only part of a floor.
Hi, Sorry if this is unrelated, but as seeing this is a post about the beta, here goes. I've installed the Beta 4 and have recently updated to 4 Beta 20 from an earlier version. It opened up fine the first few times, but now it gives me the following message:
Application Error Unable to launch the application. Name: Sweet Home 3D 4.0 Beta Publisher: eTeks From: http://www.sweethome3d.com
Then, there's two buttons: Ok and Details.
If I click details:
Error: Failed to validate signing of launch file. The signed version does not match the downloaded version.
Then there's a tab "Launch File" with a bunch of code and a tab "Exception" with a bunch of info.
I don't know how to fix this. I've tried reinstalling, rebooting, ending the process manually, etc.
If you need either of the texts under those tabs, let me know.
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 4.0
Robert, you should click again on the Java Web Start link shown on this page. Depending on your system, Java Web Start applications used to upgrade more easily, but Oracle recently introduced some changes for security sake, that may oblige the user to download the JNLP file each time its content changed. As the JNLP file of the final version is more stable, this issue shouldn't happen at the final release of the version 4.0.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 4.0
Denis, Hans, Szymon, thanks for your feedback. From you answers, this ceiling computation feature doesn't feel perfect, and I agree.
what about an option to exclude a wall from ceiling calculation ? Maybe a checkbox in the wall's properties dialog ?
Nice idea but still too complicate for basic user to understand, as well as the wall's properties dialog is already quite filled with a lot of information. One of my idea was to add a Flat check box in the Ceiling section of the room modification dialog. A more simple option placed among other user interface options relative to ceiling. If the users wonder what it changes, they can test it and undo/redo it, or look in the help. The biggest problem with ceilings is that they are visible only from below, and I'm not sure that playing with that 3D feature was a good idea for people unaware of it.
don't recalculate the ceiling after every change, but make a Recalculate button, just as for the walls around a room.
Sorry but I feel it wouldn't be consistent with the way Sweet Home 3D works for other features: the user sees the effect of its initial drawing or its change at once, and recomputing walls around a room is just a shortcut of something the user could do with existing features. Following your idea, what would happen if the user would move a point of a room? It would keep always the same elevation until he clicks on that button? And if the elevation of some room points is incorrect at the initial creation of a room, recalculating them won't resolve any issue.
I would enable this nice mechanism when there exists only one way of spanning a ceiling (e.g. 2nd from left in top row, or second from top in first column).
Sorry but I'm not sure to understand what you mean.
However, in some complex situations one can do it in more distinct ways. I would disable the mechanism if different strategies of triangulation result in different ceilings.
The triangulation is computed by Java 3D itself. So if I want to test different strategies, I would have to study its algorithm and reprogram it some way, without guaranty that there could be more than one possible strategy at the end!
The mechanism doesn't work fine for low walls.
The Flat option I proposed could help to resolve this issue. But in the case you reported, you should actually create a room for the floor, and a second room for the ceiling with only 4 points at the room corners.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 4.0
Emmanuel,
I fully understand that it's not simple to find a "one size fits all" solution to compute roofs and ceilings. So maybe a two-pronged strategy, which distinguishes between roofs and ceilings, would work better? - Ceilings generally are flat. - Roofs are in a majority of cases non-flat, and/or extend beyond the walls of the building. I have used other 3D programs, and in general they also make this distinction. Even for non-technical users, it wouldn't be too complicated to understand there is a difference between those two parts of a building.
Hans
PS : When using b19, I draw a rectangular room with a partially sloping ceiling (what you call sloping 6 points) it generates one sloping roof, without the bend in it. Is it Ubuntu, or did I forget the magic spell? :-) http://www.mediafire.com/file/wa62c9n9yt5l8py/SlopingCeilingTest#2.sh3d
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Hans
new website - under constuction hansdirkse.info
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[Edit 3 times,
last edit by hansmex at Mar 3, 2013, 2:19:23 PM]
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Re: Sweet Home 3D 4.0
Hans, actually, I wanted to remove the sloping ceiling feature when I introduced levels in version 3.4. But a user warned me that he documented that feature in a book, so we agreed I'll keep it only for last level. Your SlopingCeilingTest#2.sh3d example doesn't work because the room doesn't have six points. Ceiling elevation is computed at room points only.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D creator
