Joined: Mar 25, 2009
Post Count: 4
Status:
Offline
Can't get dimension lines to work
I just installed 1.7 on Linux, and am failing pretty miserably at trying to create a floorplan based on measurements I've taken. I've done this many times before with other floorplan packages, but apparently there's something fundamentally different about the paradigm used by sweethome3d that I'm unable to understand.
First, I can't get dimension lines to work at all. They won't stay attached to the features they're measuring. For example, I create a dimension line showing the inside distance between two walls. When a wall moves, the dimension line endpoint doesn't move when the wall does -- it just sits there uselessly measuring distance to a point in "empty space".
It seems as if dimension lines aren't dimensioning actual drawing features, it's like they're just lines of arbitrary length and position that are unrelated to anything else on the drawing. How do I get dimension lines to be "real" dimensions that correspond to distance between features on the drawing?
What I'm trying to do is create rooms with specified inside dimensions. It's not clear what the "length" of a wall really means, but it doesn't seem to correspond to inside dimensions.
So, I created inside dimension lines and then tried to adjust wall positions to get the required inside dimensions. That doesn't work in a couple ways:
1) the inside dimensions don't change when the wall moves.
2) walls keep coming "disconnected" from each other when I try adjust them.
I've read through the users guide, but apparently I need something a lot more basic that explains the underlying paradigm, because I'm constantly surprised by the behavior I see. Is there any documentation for people who don't already understand how the program works?
-- Grant
[Note: this thread was started on sourceforge.net forums]
Joined: Mar 25, 2009
Post Count: 4
Status:
Offline
Re: Can't get dimension lines to work
The basic problem I keep running into is that I rarely do everything exactly right the first time. But, when I try to move a wall or change a wall length, everything falls down: dimension lines get disconnected from their features, corners are no longer right angles, walls come disconnected at what used to be corners, etc.
I must be doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what.
France
Joined: Nov 7, 2005
Post Count: 9183
Status:
Offline
Re: Can't get dimension lines to work
In Sweet Home 3D, no item is connected to an other one, except for a set of walls created together. That behavior simplifies the management of modified and deleted objects because they aren't bound to other ones, and I don't feel like users complain that much about that. On the other side it gives users the full freedom to do what they want with each item in the plan.
The length of walls is measured between their connecting points (the points with a little arrow at each end). I know that it may not be the length you're interested by in real life, but Sweet Home 3D has no mean to guess if you prefer to display the length between the connecting points of the current wall, the length on its left side or the length on its right side. It depends on the thickness and the angle of a future wall that you didn't draw yet!
Conclusion : you should create dimensions for documentation at the end of your project.
By the way, the help proposed in Sweet Home 3D is much more detailled than its user's guide available on the web.
----------------------------------------
Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
Joined: Mar 25, 2009
Post Count: 4
Status:
Offline
Re: Can't get dimension lines to work
>In Sweet Home 3D, no item is connected to an other one, except >for a set of walls created together.
There's no way to add to a wall after it's created? That's probably why my walls keep coming apart when I try to modify them.
>That behavior simplifies the management of modified and >deleted objects because they aren't bound to other ones, and I >don't feel like users complain that much about that. On the >other side it gives users the full freedom to do what they want >with each item in the plan.
It makes dimension lines far less useful than they are in other floorplan/CAD packages. In other packages a dimension line represents the dimension of an object. When the object changes, the dimension line changes correspondingly. Likewise, if you want a specific dimension, you click on the dimension line and enter it.
Having things not "connected" also makes it difficult to adjust wall positions without creating gaps that have to be manually closed up. Other packages understand that walls are connected to each other, and when you move one end of a wall, the other end stays connected to the same wall it was previously connected to (though by default that connection point generally slides to maintain right-angled corners).
>The length of walls is measured between their connecting points >(the points with a little arrow at each end).
So lengths are measured along wall center-line to the center-line of adjoining walls. Unfortunately, that's the one dimension that you usually can't physically measure in the real world.
>I know that it may not be the length you're interested by in >real life, but Sweet Home 3D has no mean to guess if you prefer >to display the length between the connecting points of the >current wall, the length on its left side or the length on its >right side.
Right. That's what dimension lines are for: to show you the lengths you _are_ interested in.
It appears my problems result from my expectation that SH3D act more like a CAD system and less like electronic paper/pencil. I realize it would be more work to make dimension lines work the way I'm used to having them work, but they don't seem nearly as useful the way they are now.
>It depends on the thickness and the angle of a future wall that >you didn't draw yet!
Again, that's why one adds dimension lines to drawings -- to tell the system what dimensions we want to see displayed and to allow us to specify those dimensions.
>Conclusion : you should create dimensions for documentation at >the end of your project.
In other CAD/floorplan packages, dimension lines can be used to get things in the right places while the project is being constructed. They're a fundamental part of a project and its objects. Dimension lines aren't just decorations tacked on at the end.
In other packages I can start with a rough sketch and measured dimensions. I set up the walls, add dimension lines for the dimensions I've measured, and then use those dimension lines to get the walls to the right places.
The approach SH3D seems to assume requires a lot of work -- you have to sit down and manually calculate all of the wall lengths along center-lines based on wall thicknesses and the various known dimensions. [The same way you would do it if you were doing the drawing with pencil and velum.]
In other packages you can just draw the walls, set up dimension lines, and then either enter the measured dimensions, or nudge the walls/doors/windows around until the displayed dimensions match the measured ones. Perhaps I just don't understand how to properly use it, but SH3D seems unsuited to drawing a floorplan based on measured dimensions unless you want to draw a floorplan and pre-calculate the center-line length of all of the walls before you start work in SH3D. Am I missing something?
France
Joined: Nov 7, 2005
Post Count: 9183
Status:
Offline
Re: Can't get dimension lines to work
> There's no way to add to a wall after it's created? > That's probably why my walls keep coming apart > when I try to modify them.
When you create a new wall, you can attach it to the previous by clicking on the *free* end of that wall. So a wall can't be attached to the middle of an other one.
> Perhaps I just don't understand how to properly use it, > but SH3D seems unsuited to drawing a floorplan based > on measured dimensions unless you want to draw > a floorplan and pre-calculate the center-line length of > all of the walls before you start work in SH3D. > Am I missing something?
Yes, I think you missed or forgot the first part of the user's guide at http://www.sweethome3d.eu/userGuide.html#importingHomeBlueprint and the first part of the video tutorial at http://www.sweethome3d.eu/documentation.html#videoTutorial : importing the blue print of your home to draw walls upon it. ;-) It's not mandatory but if you want to layout furniture in an existing home, it's really faster, and from day one, Sweet Home 3D was designed with this feature in mind (and dimensions were added afterwards for documentation purpose).
By the way, note that there's already a (still open) request about dimensions connected to objects : see nezdelion comment at http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&a...id=152568&atid=784668 Feel free to download Sweet Home 3D sources and contribute such a modification, but be aware that connecting objects in a software costs a lot in programming time, if you want the software behavior to remain ergonomic.
----------------------------------------
Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
I don't _have_ a blueprint. If I had a bluprint, I'd just use that. I wouldn't need to draw a floorplan.
I've managed to get a partial floorplan done -- it's not easy, but if you lay out the dimension lines first, and then eyball the wall placements to get the dimensions right, you can get something approximate. Things don't ever line up exactly. There's no gravity/magnetism, so wall positions won't "snap" to the dimension lines (or each other). Other objects (cabinets, bathtubs, etc.) won't snap to walls or dimension lines either. It's probably close enough, but when you print it out there all lots of small gaps and overlaps that shouldn't be there.
Now I'm stuck trying to figure out how to print to a large paper-size. There's a "custom" selection, but it doesn't seem to do anything.
[It' would be awfully nice if there was a way to turn off of the 3D stuff. The program is pretty sluggish, and I assume it's the 3D stuff that's slowing it down.]
Unfortunately, I think it's time to install Windows and go back to the program I used to use. :(
I hate Windows, but at least I can do a large-format printing, walls are all connected to each other, and dimension lines are associated with the things they're measuring. I also like the use of standard floorplan symbols instead of the white bounding-box with the rendered picutre.
Just before leaving work, I asked one of my coworkers about the software name he used and that helped him designing his new house. Sweet Home 3D, he said. I may use it for a 2D floor plan of my flat, I said. It may be painful for a so little use case, he answered. I did not want to believe him. After 2.5 hours of reading documentation and tries (with v2.4 from ubuntu repositories and v3.0 from download), I have the same feeling as Grant in post above : it just does not work as I expected.
Here is my use case : I bought an old flat, and I did not get any blueprint of the 2D floor plan. I want to draw one. Without layout of furnitures. I measured the lengths of my walls, then did a little sketch-up in SH3D, and wanted to enter the walls' dimensions in the software. And this is where it is so painful, as explained in Grant's post above : you have to take into account the width of the walls and add half of the width to all measurements.
I just want here to emphasize that the expected behavior explained by Grant is what I expected too, and I would like it to be implemented.
Netherlands
Joined: Sep 26, 2009
Post Count: 3952
Status:
Offline
Re: Can't get dimension lines to work
Thierry,
Although I'm not the software developer of SH3D, I take the liberty of giving an answer.
My guess is that the functionality you seek will never be implemented in SH3D, nor in any other 3D software program. Yes, it's possible to reconstruct a room exactly from 6 measurements: the four sides, and two diagonals. And if all rooms in a given house were square or rectangular, you could even reconstruct every room in a house. It would be far more difficult to correctly re-construct L-shaped or Z-shaped rooms, rooms with round walls, etc. And we haven't even talked about wall thickness, something you cannot measure as easily as wall length.
SH3D is written as a tool to make a 2D drawing of a room and visualize how its interior would look in 3D. Ease of use is the key here, and I'm glad the developer, Emmanuel Puybaret, fiercely defends that point of view, and makes it his guiding principle in every decision he makes when programming a new feature.
If you need a 100% correct and reliable plan of your house, you will need to invest some time to figure out how to do it. Wall thickness is the key element that makes it a bit difficult. I've helped people in the past, and will continue to help in the future.
Another way of finding out whether or not SH3D is useful to you, is trying out demo versions of commercially available programs. It's something I have done extensively, and although some programs offered far more features than SH3D, no paid program that I have used offered the same ease of use.
Of course SH3D is open source, so feel free to use its programming code to modify the program to suit your needs.
Hans
----------------------------------------
Hans
