Section view - create 2D cut through the building to complement floorplan

[siddie]

Hello,
i am planning the modernisation and renovation of our newly bought old house with sweethome3d and am very grateful for this wonderful piece of software.
There is one thing i am missing and i'm wondering if there might be some workaround to achieve what i need.

To get a plan model of the heights where e.g. windows are built in, i would like to print a plan of each side of the house and add measures into this plan.

In german this kind of view is called "Schnitt" - english translation seems to be "section". It's like if you would cut vertically through the building and lay down the cut into a 2D drawing.

Are there any ideas or experience if and how this could be achieved?
Any help would be highly appreciated.

Regards, Siddie

[hansmex]

If you want a side-view of the house (EN: elevation) you could position the virtual visitor at a (large) distance and make a picture.

If you want a cut through the house (EN: cross section), well, that is not possible in SH3D.

H

[okh]

As hansmex says, SH3D does not generate or support façade / lateral views of a building. The 3D view can be copied (screen-dumped) to a picture file, but then there is the distortion of the view. If the design is not to complicated, and how accurate your lateral view needs to be, the following link describes possible workarounds: SF #676 Lateral view, wall view (which in turn links to two forum threads, 5498 and 5416). In the links you will find a couple of examples, not perfect solutions, maybe sufficient for simple alterations. With the text and line-drawing in SH3D 5.0, it is of course possible to do more just with SH3D without the help of external editors.


ok

[siddie]

Thank you Hans and OK!

The term "cross section" helped me out to search for the right thing and i could find the workaround that OK suggested now as well.
This should be enough for my needs. I can remove all the walls and elements except the 1 wall including windows etc., export and import it while rotating to put it on the ground. Then i can add all the measures needed.

Excellent, thanks again.

Maybe one last question just out of interest: why is it, that the imported .obj file is as unsharp as in the example of OK?

Thanks,
Siddie

[okh]

why is it, that the imported .obj file is as unsharp as in the example of OK?

I don't know, but I suspect it has to do with the pixel size of the plan icon that is used to represent objects in the 2D plan. At least that would explain why the method works reasonably well with smaller constructions (with some lines added), but gets too blurry for larger wall elements. Which again means using the room/wall/dimension/line tools to sketch the façade. As mentioned, it is not perfect, but it proved sufficient to make a wall diagram for the electrician. Although, I must admit I ended up exporting the 2D view and editing the SVG with InkScape and LibreOffice in the end. In the thread with the video of his house (worth a look), Akalvin used a simpler approach in this post. ok

[Puybaret]

Okh, you're right, this is due to the plan icon size which is 128x128.
Maybe I'll add in a future version a parameter that will let you choose a larger value.

[okh]

.. plan icon size which is 128x128.

Thanks. Useful info for future [font=courier new]planIcon#[/font] (read staircases, they will come...). Somehow I thought planIcons were ≤ 256×256.

Maybe I'll add in a future version a parameter that will let you choose a larger value.

I doubt there is a need except in very special cases (like this cheat). But as a Akalvin appears to suggest in 5415, some way of creating a parallel projection image (maybe in the photo rendering, flat projection 'lens'?), to generate a flat side-view, would get my vote (before a larger planIcon). Having a flat image in just about any format would be useful. ok

[Puybaret]

[font=courier new]planIcon#[/font] can reference a bigger icon if needed. 128x128 is just the size of the ones computed from a 3D object in the plan.

Specifying a larger value can be also useful for people who want to print the plan or export to SVG with a better resolution. But maybe in those cases, I could try to compute the best size automatically for a 300 dpi resolution for example.

[okh]

larger value can be also useful for people who want to print the plan or export to SVG with a better resolution

I see that point. Still, I think I am not the only user to remove the raster graphics from the SVG export when wanting to do high-resolution, editable 2D SVG plan (like in 5245. There are, after all, few objects you need in a proper room plan. Only a few windows and doors, staircases, the odd fireplace and such.

Which makes me curious, I suppose there is no easy way of using SVG as planIcons? If so, that would make for very high quality plan output

Anyway - nothing I loose sleep over ...

ok

[Puybaret]

Adding support to SVG icons would oblige me to add a library that would be able to interpret SVG graphics orders and draw them at screen. Such a library probably exists but I didn't try yet, mostly because I fear some performance loss.