Netherlands
Joined: Sep 26, 2009
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Re: New plugin: Advanced plan editing
Tobias,
I keep learning... :-)
Maybe a pop-up window as in the Edit room points dialogue could help? Can you create user interaction there? Or maybe show all available connection possibilities (as an image on a large button?) and let people choose?
Hans
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Hans
Joined: Jul 17, 2011
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Re: New plugin: Advanced plan editing
Hans brings up some very good points, and while i would like to see these as well, I must ask if this would confuse/muddle vertex placement of the model. Rather I would like to ask that if you do decide to put these changes in could you please keep the placement or any new vertices in the model in mind. Google sketchup is a very nice program, but upon export the models tend to break down(for lack of a better term) when it's time to render in outside programs. This program is great. i may have spoken too soon as I have yet to purposely try to create any non-manifold geometry.
Joined: Jul 17, 2011
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Re: New plugin: Advanced plan editing
Hmmm, the last portion of my previous post doesn't read quite right. Edit:I may have spoken too soon about the programs ability to export clean geometry while using you plugin in ways not foreseen.
DE
Joined: Aug 6, 2012
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Re: New plugin: Advanced plan editing
While reading this thread, I had the same idea Hans mentioned in his last post. After selecting walls and hit the "connect" button, a simple popup with i.e. four buttons would be sufficient. Those buttons could look like "E1 => S2" , "E1 <= S2", "E2 => S1" , "E2 <= S1" (just example, with E as "End" and S as "Start"). Maybe with a little graphic on top showing two walls and descriptions of their edges. At the first usage, one would need to look a at graphic and buttons to figure it out, but then it should be easy. And it shouldn't require much change of code (except the dialog box), just defining the two edges and their order by the buttons before connecting the walls.
In that dialog one could also add more buttons, i.e. to connect the extensions of walls. Lets say I have a wall from (0;0)->(2;0) and (4;4)->(4;1). These intersect at (4;0), which is where I want them to connect. This is a simple example, but imagine two wall-edges very close to each other and maybe even overlapping. Simply connecting them would rotate wall a little to be able to connect to the other wall's edge, thus requiring readjustment afterwards to make them intersect at the same angle they as before. Computation of intersection of two straight lines is an easy mathematical task, also considering those two to be parallel (in which case there would be no intersection and the button could i.e. be disabled).
Another suggestion is to enable wall thickness adjustment in both directions in the "resize" option (the disabled Y-field for walls). That's also simple mathematical or geometrical (if lines are not perpendicular) calculation. Wall thickness could then be extended in one direction, without "messing up" everything else on the other side of the wall (i.e. I have a complete house, but then decide to use thicker insulation on the outside -> I could easily expand wall thickness to outside direction without having to readjust wall edges as it was the case before when wall thickness was extended in both directions).
I was about to create a plugin with the wall-thickness-adjustmend option myself, but even after reading the plugin-tutorial I'd need a while to read into Java. Besides, we already have this nice plugin, it would be nicer to extend this one rather than creating a new plugin. I think I'll give it a try, don't know if this plugin is still in development.
Joined: Sep 15, 2010
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Re: New plugin: Advanced plan editing
While the plugin is currently not in "active" development, I'm still able to add changes when needed - if it takes not to much time. So if for example you add (write) some missing features, I could integrate those.
I haven't created the mentioned dialog for connecting walls, because it worked for me the way it is now as I just invert walls where necessary and it is difficult to come up with a comprehensible solution if more than two walls are selected (which is possible) - if you have one, feel free to implement it and send me the code.
The idea of connection on the intersection point is nice, but would need either the the dialog first or another menu item.
I don't think that adjusting the wall thickness has something to do with the resize dialog, at least not in the way you describe it. The resize operation "moves" every point relative to the selected position. That means a wall closer to that position would gain less thickness - your idea would only work for a rectangular connection of four walls. Next problem: your example calls a wall "outside", but a wall has only left and right. Calculating which one is on the inside and which one on the outside is not that easy (especially if you select walls which are not forming a closed figure).
So all in all you would need a new action called "change wall thickness" which opens a dialog where you can select the direction (left/right) and the amount (relative/absolute) of the modification.
By the way when you implement that functionality you will learn that the mathematical calculation is in most cases not the problem - it is the mapping into the object model and the creation of an intuitive UI. So a simple mathematical problem can lead to an extensive task for a software developer.
DE
Joined: Aug 6, 2012
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Re: New plugin: Advanced plan editing
Thanks for the quick answer!
About connecting walls: You're right about the dialog box, I didn't consider cases of more than two walls. When I wrote that, I already had the idea of intersecting lines in mind, and such a dialog box would've eliminated the need of a second menu button. I'll see if I can come up with a usable solution :)
About wall thickness: The intuitive perception of the "resize" operation is (at least to me) that I pick an object and can resize X and Y in different directions. Technically of course, that means moving the edge points. If I select a few walls, I can resize them (i.e. the convex hull, or the rectangle they span). Now I select a single wall. I can only adjust its length, not the thickness if it's a horizontal/vertical wall (the greyed out field for Y). Obviously this is because a wall consists of only 2 edgeds. Resizing a diagonal wall then behaves like regarding that wall as the diagonal of a rectangle, and move that rectangle, i.e. those 2 points. Now of course you're right, the "resize" dialog does not fit for changing wall thickness, all of its UI elements are already in use.
I came up with the "resize" dialog, because I only tried it with single horizontal walls, and the Y-field was greyed out. One could then use the Y field to adjust the thickness, but as mentioned above, now I see it's not suited for this :) My example says "outside" becaus it's an example ^^ I mentioned "one side" before, of course it has to be "left" or "right". In the case of an example, I as the user of course know which one of left/right I'd have to choose when I want to change "outside".
So yes, I'd need a separate dialog for that. And of course I'm aware that UI and intuitiveness often proves as the harder part, but as it may be seen from my explanations, I thought it could be easily integrated into your "resize" UI leaving only the mathematical part ^^ So as this requires a whole new dialog box, I guess I'll just try it myself. Currently reading into JPanel and other Java stuff (enabling "undo" etc). I hope I can come up with a working peace of code soon :)
awesome plugin... I find the Edit|Resize feature invaluable. One addition to the functionality I'd like to see is an 'Apply' button in the Resize dialog. This would be especially useful when moving objects using the resize/justify method. Currently this requires 2 Resize actions, one to facilitate the offset, then again to resize the object back to original size. With an 'Apply' button the 2 step procedure could be performed without closing the Resize dialog.
Joined: Sep 15, 2010
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Re: New plugin: Advanced plan editing
Hi all,
a new version of the plugin (1.6) is available. Besides some minor fixes it includes a "move" action (although it is a bit late for baj, who seemed to need such a feature) and a "flip" action (what was up to now only possible with negative values in the "resize" action).
Thanks to Igor Perminov, who contributed some of the fixes and features.
