Well, during the last years of working with sketchup i collected some ideas for the workflow, which i found useful for me.
After some tests with ruby programming things became more realistic.....
While working on a large urban project with lot of calculations and 'design versions' in summer 2014
a small ruby for the calculation of the gfa was born.
At the end of the day the goal was clear:
What do i need at the beginning of the project for a quick basic estimation of the project and it's cost:
- buildings, quickly created with 1 click from any selected face or surface, flat or curved,
editable up to a certain extend, whith updatable gfa-calculation and some defined parameters
- sites, recognizing corresponding buildings for an estimated site-index calculation
- simple terrain-tools, where basis elements like 'waterplanes' or 'streets' can be declared
- simple material system with predefined materials and their costs
- simple 'dummy' elements for outdoor areas (trees, lights, elements)
- some simple modelling tools for quick mesh modification
- page/view management for saving views from any tool and functions
for quick immediate export of views to jpg & co.
- layer and shadow management for all pages
- easy style definition for all pages
- a report function, anytime updatable with 1 click
- predefined values to reduce input times
- quick access to all important functions (for me the context menu is the best place, yet later i also discovered the toolbars and created the creen information system.....)
Another important approach is 'speeding up' the workflow.
For this the most useful functions can be selected from the context menu and/or toolbars.
This is time saving, since the user does not have to move the mouse (and his focus) to anywhere else and can mostly work 'in place' on the screen (which, after 30 years of working on a pc, became one of most important parameters for me, especially on today's wide screens).
Some of my tools also offer tables of predefined values in the context menu (besides the input via keyboard in the VCB).
In the preleminary design very often a selection of preset values with 1 click is precise enough and is a real timesaver.
The more sophisticated tools offer a parameter menue and save/load options.
Nearly every context menue offers a 'view-section' with quick options for saving views/pages incl. batch export with a name option and much more !
But of course:
There are also some toolbars available for some key parts of the programm.
From there you have a quicker access to selected options and functions.
Besides all that the 'AREAL PLAYGROUND' is a funny tool for generating of endless variations of your selected buildings, especially at the beginning of large urban projects, for the definition of skylines etc. etc. and estimating the gfa of the project (gfa is updated with every version generated).
So every new version of your 'city' is calculated for optimizing the design (you get your GFA within seconds in any stage of the project).
All this is surely very subjective, so maybe you just want to try & find out, if there is something useful for you within the AREAL3D - tool collection.
If so, just let me know. -:)
So, get your trial at
www.areal3d.euzf
