Medeek

I have also recently posted this video specifically for Chief users:

I only just recently realized that many Chief users are importing SketchUp geometry into CA and so I thought it might be worth your while to take a look at the Medeek Truss extension for SketchUp. I think the feature that would be of primary interest to a CA user would be the Timber Truss tool. Please take a look at the tutorial video below for more information: If anyone has any questions please feel free to contact me at any time. I can most easily be reached at my email nathan@medeek.com Sincerely, Nathaniel P. Wilkerson, PE Medeek Engineering LLC

After perusing the forum for a bit I was actually quite surprised at how much mention was made of the 3D Warehouse hosted by SketchUp. It appears that there is a significant need for CA users to import various 3D models that were originally drawn in SketchUp, everything from cars, to furniture even appliances. CA strikes me as a very architectural centric system, which is good but it also is not well suited for general modeling like SketchUp is. The point of my extensions and the geometry they create is to take advantage of the Ruby backend and turn some of that geometry into parametric entities. The biggest frustration for SketchUp users is not the modeling environment in my experience but the lack of parametrics, everything is essentially "dumb" geometry. For some things this is perfectly acceptable and to be expected but for other architectural elements that are geometrically relational this becomes very tedious and inexact, especially when things change the design/dimensions. Having the extensions in SketchUp resolves these issues, while maintaining the joyous 3D modeling experience. P.S. Your truss looks good, however what do you if the client then wants a 7:12 pitch or an 8:12 and so on and so forth. With a ruby program all of this is simply one click and you have a new truss that meets your needs, rather than having to create a massive library of every possible pitch and permutation. What if the engineer calls for more bolts, the bottom line is there are too many possible solutions to the problem that is why a programmatic solution is simply the best. P.P.S. As you suggest creating that truss within CA would probably be a tall task for your average CA user, in fact I would venture a guess that most would not even attempt it. Drawing that manually is even tedious within SketchUp (but probably easier than in Chief), that is why having a dedicated extension or tool to easily create such complex elements is the way to go in my honest opinion. Say for example you need to adjust your bolt sizes or spacing? I can do any of that with the click of a button, to do this manually is a real pain. Just imagine if Chief had an API and one could create extensions or widgets for Chief that could do this sort of thing like I have done in SU, the world would be a much better place.

I totally get having any truss linked to the roof so when you adjust the pitch the truss will adjust with it. However, how would you go about creating a fairly complicated timber truss within Chief that automatically is linked and shows bolts, plates or other such hardware or accoutrements? Is such a thing possible? If it is not easy to create such a truss within Chief then there is probably some utility for my Truss extension for certain Chief users who are designing high end homes. Essentially one would use the Truss plugin within SketchUp to customize or fine tune your timber truss and then import directly into Chief. If the roof pitch changes due to customer design requests (as often happens) rather than laboriously update the existing geometry within Chief, one would hop back into SketchUp, take the existing truss, copy it, and then edit it with the extension, no manual editing required. Once the desired look is again achieved, one would bring it back into Chief replacing the previous truss. P.S. The only reason to copy the existing truss in SketchUp is to create a record of the original design in case one would ever want to revert back to the original truss, such things do happen. I've done some projects where there have been upwards of 4 or 5 iterations on seemingly insignificant elements in a design, but as we all know the customer is king.

It would be really cool if I could somehow create an advanced timber truss module that could work within Chief, but it does not appear that such a thing is possible without a back end language or API.

I guess there really is no way to program Chief like there is with SketchUp. I originally come from the AutoCad world so before I ever ventured into Ruby and SketchUp I was already using AutoLisp to create my own routines for specific tasks and some geometry creation. I am a little surprised that Chief does not open itself up to 3rd party development, I think it would be a huge boon for not only Chief itself but for the entire user base and the Chief ecosystem.

Okay, that answers a lot of questions for me and helps me understand why I was not finding any real documentation on any sort of API within Chief. I'm going to assume that you are also unable to create any standalone objects or entities within Chief using Ruby.

Lately I've been giving some serious thought about porting some of my extensions (Medeek Extensions for SketchUp) to CA. However, I'm not finding a lot of documentation on creating Ruby programs that run inside of CA. I have a number of questions: 1.) Can one create full fledged extensions in CA like one can do within SketchUp? For example I have tools within my SketchUp extensions that can generate various building elements, like columns, trusses, and staircases. 2.) Does CA have full access to the Ruby engine like SU does? 3.) Are there any developers like myself creating extensions within CA?

Amazing roof, amazing trusses. The images up top are the final output from the manufacturer using Mitek software or something equivalent? The polar array of trusses that top the turrets are really something else. I would love to roll this 3D model around in SketchUp for a couple of hours just to study the trusses and how they are designed and come together to form the roof.