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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
I want to draw a floor plan from scratch for a house I bought but where no real plan exists. So I want to start with the outer walls and I would like them to start at 0.0, not at -0.20 because the walls are 40 cm thick. Is there by now an option to do that or do I need to live with starting with an offset?
Walls have a thickness so no matter how you look at it you will always have an offset. Start what part at 0.0? The outside top corner of the wall? The inside top corner? If you start a side of the wall at 0 then the other side has an offset as the wall thickness. So you always have two numbers. The way walls are calculated with the center you only have to deal with two X,Y values for a wall, not four.
What is the importance of starting the first wall at 0.0? There's very little to gain for adding the other walls. I usually try to set 0.0 as the center of the house. Now THAT has some advantages with alignment, mirroring, and rotating if the house is symmetrical. With 0.0 at the center you can draw the top horizontal wall, copy, unselect, paste, and change the negative Y values to the same positive values and you have an exact copy as the bottom wall. That system works for everything in your plan that has a mirrored object on the other side of 0.0. You could select the two walls, copy, unselect, paste, and rotate 90° and you have a square of walls and you only drew a single wall to get there. Of course most houses are not square but it explains why setting 0.0 as the center of the house is more convenient than starting the first wall at 0.0.
Germany
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
Thanks, function10.
I hope it will be implemented some time soon. I do not see a big issue with implementing it since you could "simply" add an option to state where the wall should be placed: centered, on the left or on the right edge. I don't see how this would make life harder for anyone if the default stays with centered but it would make life easier for many people.
Germany
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
Walls have a thickness so no matter how you look at it you will always have an offset. Start what part at 0.0? The outside top corner of the wall? The inside top corner? If you start a side of the wall at 0 then the other side has an offset as the wall thickness. So you always have two numbers. The way walls are calculated with the center you only have to deal with two X,Y values for a wall, not four.
Which damage would it do to anyone if there was an option to say "start the wall centered, at the left edge or the right edge" if the default stays at centered? That way, everybody who does not want the feature could work as he always did and everyone who wants to use the feature could use it. Apparently, several people feel the need for it since it seems to be a recurring question - and other floor plan software suites offer it for years already. So far, I rarely saw anyone complaining about an option he was given as long as it is implemented in a way that does not force anyone to use it.
What is the importance of starting the first wall at 0.0?
To have the outer length of the house aligned with the 0.0 mark on the grid so that you do not have to keep in mind that part of the length is outside of 0.0.
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
To have the outer length of the house aligned with the 0.0 mark on the grid so that you do not have to keep in mind that part of the length is outside of 0.0.
Maybe you should think about that. The position of every object for a house is in relation to each other, not to a position on the grid. It's just a psychological quirk that we as humans feel more 'comfortable' starting at a known point. It really doesn't matter where you start the first wall of your house. It will be the only object starting at 0.0 and the rest is related to that wall, not to the starting point. You could start your first wall at 122.7,-20.3 and it would change nothing.
If you really want the first wall to start at 0,0 just move it after drawing: half of the thickness to the right, and half of the thickness down. That will position the top left corner at 0,0. From there you work from that first wall and probably not look at 0,0 again.
The only good reason I can think of where positioning the first wall at a specific location is beneficial, is if you have a complex base plan and use the grid coordinates for placing other elements. In that case it is probably more logical to place the center of the wall at 0,0, not a corner.
Germany
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
If you really want the first wall to start at 0,0 just move it after drawing: half of the thickness to the right, and half of the thickness down. That will position the top left corner at 0,0. From there you work from that first wall and probably not look at 0,0 again.
That's exactly what I did but I find it quite cumbersome given there could be such an easy fix to an issue several users face even if you cannot relate to it.
A use case that you might actually relate to is another thread in the forum that I currently cannot find any more. There, someone asked how to connect two walls which have a different thickness and that are connected but NOT at the centre but on the outer edge of both walls meaning the wall looks like one wall from the outside but it looks different from the inside since the wall is less thick starting at a certain point.
The answer given in the forum was "this is not possible in Sweet Home 3D". Not a very helpful answer and the option I described a couple of times now would also easily fix this issue / use case.
France
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
If you want to draw one room (and even more than a room) from their inner dimensions, view this video. Since it was published, you can even draw rooms with an irregular shape by triangulation.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
A use case that you might actually relate to is another thread in the forum that I currently cannot find any more. There, someone asked how to connect two walls which have a different thickness and that are connected but NOT at the centre but on the outer edge of both walls meaning the wall looks like one wall from the outside but it looks different from the inside since the wall is less thick starting at a certain point.
The answer given in the forum was "this is not possible in Sweet Home 3D". Not a very helpful answer and the option I described a couple of times now would also easily fix this issue / use case.
And why is that not a helpful answer? Id does answer the question. On the other hand, it IS possible in Sweet Home 3D (with a little trickery) and that is exactly why I advised you to first get some experience before demanding changes. If you expect software that you just started with (and have no experience with) to do exactly what you expect than clearly Sweet Home 3D is not for you. As with all software you have to learn how to use it. You can't expect software to be changed because you don't know how to use it.
Germany
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
Thanks for your very unhelpful answer. The feature requested by many users and according to the first answer "discussed since Sweet Home 3D exists" is OBVIOUSLY a feature that many users want. You can say that you personally do not have any use case for it but you cannot say that it is not useful for anyone. The only problem with implementing it that I can see is that someone would have to invest the time to actually implement it - and apparently, you do not see any other disadvantages, either since I asked and you could not come up with any. Since according to the first answer, this feature is requested / discussed since Sweet Home 3D exists, there will certainly come the point where more time was wasted denying that it would be a useful feature than would have been needed to actually implement it.
"This is not possible in Sweet Home 3D" is obviously not a helpful answer. If you cannot see that, it seems that you actually think everybody should use the software exactly the way YOU see fit and everybody needs to accept that you are God and useful features will not be implemented since you do not want to see them implemented.
This discussion seems to be pointless and therefore, I won't comment any further. I said what I had to say and you can keep ignoring the wishes of users and keep wasting time on telling them why they are stupid or at some point, you can see the light and allow someone to implement it which would be a much better use of someone's time.
Germany
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
If you want to draw one room (and even more than a room) from their inner dimensions, view this video. Since it was published, you can even draw rooms with an irregular shape by triangulation.
France
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Re: Exact Wall Alignment Issues
"Savoir vivre" includes also some kind answers. If you want answers to your requests, you should also consider kindly the answers given by other users even if they don’t go in the direction you hoped. I personally don’t believe in the feature you propose in Sweet Home 3D because it’s just too complicated for users who don’t care.
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Emmanuel Puybaret, Sweet Home 3D developer
