My name is Nathaniel P. Wilkerson and I am the creator of the Medeek suite of tools within SketchUp. I’m not sure if this is the correct forum or category but I am in the process of porting my “Truss plugin” from SketchUp to Rhino. I’ve had a number of requests for this over the years so I’ve finally decided to attempt the port, probably against my better judgement due to the difficulty.
I will be documenting that port and further development of the Medeek Truss plugin in Rhino within this topic.
The Medeek Truss extension for SketchUp was originally created (or I should say started) back in October of 2015. Since then it has slowly evolved and matured. If you are curious about the development path it followed there is a parallel thread on the SketchUp forum here:
I am still not entirely sure of how successful this port will be but I have started and so far progress is being made. Once I begin to create actual geometry I will post a few screenshots and hopefully garner some feedback.
Just working through some of my geometry algorithms right now. Textures, plates, gable trusses are still a ways off. Here is a raised heel fink truss (with strut). There are always four raised heel variants as well as the standard truss. The good news is that the actual core geometry engine is essentially already written and most of this code can port over 1-to-1.
It is always safe to start with one of the more basic truss types. Once this is validated I will add the rest of the configurations in for common trusses (ie. King Post, Queen Post, Howe, Fan etc…)
The textures are still giving me some grief. I don’t know why but applying textures in Rhino seems a bit more finicky that it does in SketchUp or Blender. Maybe I am just doing things wrong in this regard.
I actually feel the opposite way, specially with SketchUp, sure the bucket is nice but for any kind of basic UV mapping or even generic box mapping you need plugins with terrible interfaces. In Rhino you can do it all natively fairly easily.
I’m still trying to figure out Rhino I guess. It does have some very nice features, and it does look great. I need to be able to control the textures better and at the same time make it lightweight as possible since these parametric assemblies get quite complex.
I’m still kind of feeling things out and learning the ropes with Rhino. I’m not sure what help I may or may not need at this point but thank-you for providing some potential resources, I may take you up on the offer.
Once I roll out the first BETA release I will better be able to gauge how much interest there is in this extension and also what things may need further refinement. All I know is that the SketchUp development process was a very iterative journey and I expect the same with Rhino, but hopefully I can go a bit faster this time.
I was initially using the WCS system for textures and not properly embedding the texture info into the actual file. The problem with this schema was that if a user created a roof assembly with my extension and then opened that file on a different machine without my extension installed the texture scaling and orientation was incorrect. I’ve since figured it out, thankfully.
AI greatly helps with Rhino development. The API documentation was never quite able to keep pace with development and is also very limited. I’ve glanced over Sketchup’s Ruby API and the documentation felt way more thorough (although I’m no Ruby developer). All sources I’ve seen state that Sketchup’s API’s are either Ruby or C (big brain stuff!!). I should consider myself fortunate to be able to program what I have in Rhino’s API. AI greatly alleviates the lack of documentation and Rhino’s development tools are constantly improving hence why I’ve been predicting that plugin development in Rhino, especially for tools like these, will take off in the near future.
Even being a Rhino user I’ve been well aware of Medeek plugins for quite some time. They provide incredible value. I’m stoked to see you come over to Rhino!!
I sincerely appreciate the vote of confidence. I was very leery about trying to port my extensions to any other platform until recently. However as you suggest AI has made things a bit more feasible. I still need to guide the port very carefully and be very firm about the hierarchy and organization of the extension but AI does help with a lot of the API particulars, not something I would be able to figure out very quickly on my own, even with the documentation.
When it comes to my Wall plugin and other advanced options (ie. boolean subtraction of roof assemblies and wall corner connections) I’m still not entirely sure things will port over cleanly but so far the geometry and underlying calculations seem to be almost 1-to-1. Textures in Rhino had me slightly confused for a while but I think we passed that hurdle now.
Also with regards to this type of detailed (framing) extension I really have no idea what already exists in the Rhino ecosystem. Hopefully there is some room for it, and also some interest.
About a week ago I completed my initial port of this same plugin to Blender however the response has been less than overwhelming. Maybe I just need to get the word out a bit better, I’m not really sure. However, it just might be the case that not too many people are doing architectural work in Blender.
The general response from the Rhino community has been much more inviting and encouraging, for that I am thankful.
) your plugins here on Rhino. Appreciate your efforts!!!
