medeek

I apologize that I have not kept this thread up to date. I am no longer actively posting to this thread however development of the Truss Plugin and now the new Wall Plugin has continued. To further follow the development of this project please visit me at Medeek Design.

Version 1.9.7 - 08.26.2017 - Added king post timber trusses with bolts and metal plates. There may be a few bugs to work out as I haven't had the time to test every possible configuration but it appears to be mostly working now. The metric version is not quite ready so the GUI defaults to the imperial units regardless of the template. View model here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model/b9530289-89ff-40c4-ac55-754344864d3a/Timber-Truss-King-Post I will add in the Queen Post and Howe configurations if requested by users and make any other corrections or adjustments as needed. The permutations with this thing is ridiculous. The truss above has larger members with a wider plate width that allows for two rows of bolts.

The ICC codes call out a minimum of a one vent within 3 feet of each corner. It shouldn't be to much trouble to create the openings in the stemwall and place some vents: For a rectangular building (4 sides) should I place 4 vents or 8 vents? Provide only the openings or also provide a generic foundation vent (lightweight geometry?) Moving an opening is actually very easy within SketchUp, when it comes to a solid wall like this. What is the typical header thickness between the top of the vent hole and the top of foundation? Vent size seems to be 16"x8" for most vents I've seen. With regards to vents there are the cheap plastic ones you can get a Home Depot or Lowes and and then there are a whole ton of more expensive louvered metal manufacturers of vents and flood vents.

The cosmetic threads actually render quite nicely as does my rebar material/texture. I just realized I have not added any custom materials into the foundation plugin. As you can see from the image the orientation of the J-bolts is the same regardless of the wall, however it would not be a couple more lines of code to orient them all facing in or facing out or some other combination. Curious how the contractors actually install these, is the orientation important?

I've been reviewing my Todo list lately and it really hasn't shrunk much, if anything it has grown a bit as I've added some new features in the last month and more catching up needs to be done with various truss types. I only work on this project part time and on the weekends as much as possible, so my progress since September of 2016 has been quite slow (took a new job with the City of Ocean Shores). Currently the Truss Plugin has seen the most development http://design.medeek.com/resources/pluginchangelog.html but I am also spread between the other separate plugins as well: Medeek Wall Plugin Medeek Structural Plugin Medeek Foundation Plugin Medeek Deck Plugin The structural and wall plugins will be just as complex and involved as the Truss Plugin and will require a couple years of my full time attention to get where they need to go. When I step back and look at everything I want to accomplish there is just no way, given my current situation, that I can achieve it. It would be nice to also be able to hire some help in knocking out some of the coding, realistically there is only so many hours in a day and only so much one person can do. I would really like to work full time on all of this as I see it has some serious potential and I'm also very excited about it but my previous attempt at using KickStarter to raise some working capital did not amount to much. I was watching Shark Tank last night and I was thinking would this type of business even have a chance in that setting? Anyhow, I am open to any ideas you might have in how to really blow this thing up and get it going.

Here is the same brick wall but with the sheathing lapping the brick ledge and the foam sill strip shown:

Started to put the Wall Plugin together in earnest today. A lot of competing interests so I'm still not sure on the date of first release yet, but at least I'm putting something together now. For the Imperial Version the First and Second Menu Items (Ext. Wall Type) are currently: First Menu: 1.) Wall Mode: Line, Polyline 2.) Wall Type: Exterior, Interior 3.) Wall Justification: Front, Center, Back 4.) Wall Height (in.): 97 5.) Wall Header Height (in.): 80 6.) Stud Size: 2x2, 2x4, 2x6, 2x8, 2x10, 2x12 7.) Stud Spacing (in.): 12,16,19.2,24,32,48 8.) Stud Direction: Left, Right 9.) Corner Offset (in.): 0 10.) Top Plate: 1,2,3 11.) Top Plate Thickness (in.): 1.5 12.) Bottom Plate: 1,2,3 13.) Bottom Plate Thickness (in.): 1.5 14.) Adv. Wall Options: YES,NO Second Menu (Adv. Wall Options): 1.) Wall Sheathing: YES,NO 2.) Sheathing Thickness: 3/8,7/16,15/32,1/2,19/32,5/8,23/32,3/4 3.) Wall Cladding: YES,NO 4.) Cladding Thickness: 3/8,7/16,15/32,1/2,19/32,5/8,23/32,3/4 5.) Wall Gypsum: YES,NO 6.) Gypsum Thickness: 1/4,3/8,1/2,5/8 I will start with the (single wall) line mode first and then progress to the polyline once I have the basic system working. Then the addition of doors and windows and advanced options which will automatically insert doors and windows into the openings. I've been thinking about brick facade and I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to incorporate this into the plugin yet. Typical air gap is 1": A 5.5" thick stud wall with 1/2" sheathing and a 1" air gap with 3.5" thick brick fits on a 10" stemwall with a 1/2" overhang of the brick. Does anyone have any wall details/sections that they would like to see implemented in the plugin? Here is the same wall but with a 4" x 6" brick ledge: Notice the APA detail the brick ledge does not project below the structural sheathing, this probably makes more sense since you probably don't want the butt end of the sheathing sitting against the concrete and absorbing moisture, even though there usually will be a foam strip between the sill plate and the concrete. I've also seen details where the sheathing laps down over the brick ledge about a 1/2", this probably makes sense in helping to keep the bugs out but then it puts the sheathing into more direct contact with the concrete. More discussion on this subject is warranted. I've never actually had to provide a wall detail for brick since most of the construction locally is with hardi-plank siding so my experience with brick is theoretical at best.

Trying out the Rayelectron Rendering plugin, I'm fairly impressed. View model here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model. ... 262991accc

An example dormer created with the dormer tool and the gable roof created with the common truss tool. Note that I have enabled all of the cladding, sheathing and GWB in the global settings. View model here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model. ... c817122285 When you select "YES" for the gypsum ceiling in the advanced options of common trusses and additional dialog is presented which then allows for manually adjusting the GWB thickness, ext. wall inset, and ceiling battens (size, spacing). You will notice that in the global settings within the "Sheathing" tab a couple of new items have been added for Gypsum Sheathing. Now I just need to enable ceiling sheathing for vaulted truss and rafter roofs, yet another large task added to the todo list. Attic and Gambrel attic trusses will require not only ceiling GWB but also the attic GWB on walls and flat and sloping ceilings. With the addition of all the interior and exterior cladding, the plugin can now generate the majority of the structural features of a roof.

Version 1.8.0- 01.22.2017 - Enabled roof cladding for common trusses. - Added nine "IKO Cambridge" architectural shingle colors into the roof cladding material library. - Added "plywood" material for roof and floor sheathing. - Added a "Sheathing" tab into the global settings. - Added entries in the "General" tab of the global settings to toggle default settings for gable end trusses and advanced options. View model here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model. ... 4e5565c97a Initially I was just going to texture the exterior face of the sheathing for the roof cladding but then I realized that there may be cases where there is roof cladding but not sheathing or vice versa. In the end I went with a separate layer, material and extrusion for the roof cladding, this allows one to get more granular with the structure and in my mind closer to reality.

Trying to find a good wood shake or shingle roof texture, this one is pretty good except for a bit of banding: Slipped in a wood shingle roof texture and a few metal ones in to Version 1.8.0.

Another item I have been putting off is the heel blocking. I'm planning on offering two variants (vertical and angled), with the option to draw in the ventilation holes (typically 2" in diameter in my region, with 3 holes per 24" o/c spacing) if desired: Obviously this is not a hot item since no one has bugged me about it but I have not forgotten it, just put it aside up until now. With raised heels this may become a bit more complicated requiring more options, (ie. a V-cut instead of the typical bird holes). More input from builders would be useful in this regard.

This is an example of custom layers and materials implemented in the Medeek Truss Plugin and Medeek Foundation Plugin and used in one model: View model here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model. ... 5c2cd3fc6c Turn off the sheathing layers first to reveal all of the structural framing etc... Regular walls were created with the Housebuilder plugin. The trim tool in the Truss Plugin was used quite successfully to manually trim back the dormer roof framing and sheathing.

Version 1.7.8 - 01.02.2017 - Enabled materials and custom layers for gable dormers. - Added advanced options for gable dormers, enabled exterior wall sheathing option. View model here: https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/model. ... 3d983e73a5

Version 1.7.7 - 12.31.2016 - Enabled materials and custom layers for gable, hip, shed, TJI and dutch gable rafter roofs.