Hello. First i want to cangratulate Speckle developers for the great job.
I don´t know if it exists on last version of Speckle (I´m running a Speckle 2.8.3 server droplet from Digital Ocean) but should be very nice to have:
Measurements in Web View
Controllers from grasshopper (I understand its harder to implement becouse it needs rhino compute to make the calculations)
Retrieve mesh color from grasshopper geometry automatically
Hi,
The controllers i mean the sliders and other inputs.
About the textures i will open the GH file from the chess board model, probably i miss something, thanks.
Hello,
Speckle web viewer seems to become quite popular and proficient , thanks a lot for this!
I’d like to second the wish for a measurement tool in the viewer as well.
Y’all, it’s exactly what is on @alex’s current docket. Stay tuned! We’d really be happy if you could share with us your favourite measurement tools and interactions, if you have the time - for example:
what would you want to measure, and how do you see yourselves doing it in the 3d viewer?
existing favourite measuring and review workflows
how would you use these measurements? for example, would you see them attached to a comment, or generally viewable in a version, etc.
Hi @dimitrie,
dimensioning will be definitely super useful to increase the adoption of the Speckle viewer (besides adding Dalux-like 2d drawings to the 3d Model … to baptize the last of the old elite with a hybrid approach ).
Regarding your questions:
A. Dimension lines
I would want to check orthogonal/free distances. Some tools don’t make it easy for the user. We are very fond of how BIMcollab Zoom is doing it. Especially the user-friendliness of orthogonal dimensioning seems to be a pain in many other platforms … for example, Dalux/Autodesks ACC are not that much but doing the job. The interesting aspect of BIMcollab is the changing indicator style of the cursor
square = you have the surface
→ You are sure by seeing it, that you have proper accurate orthogonal dimensioning
point = you have the corner of something significant to catch
B. Coordinates and Anntotations
Coordinates of points might be interesting too, especially when dealing with infrastructure or irregular buildings with multiple height jumps of the floor slabs. This is also missing in BIMcollab. Solibri allows for it with a Markup
.
BTW: Annotation markups might be interesting too (by selecting a handful of parameters, not just the coordinates).
This is basically for figuring out geometry as the dimensions are not shown like with drawings. Dimension lines are super important for having the impression of how big this stuff you are seeing actually is. Additionally, it can be used like for redlining … please change this dimension shown to value x. People in our office complain that the dimensions in the IFC Viewers (in the majority of them) vanish, which means they cannot prepare views and have to redo the stuff regularly. Compared to authoring tools it is super inconvenient for them to handle dimensioning in viewers, which is the reason why they prefer doing it in PDF, Autocad etc… One of the benefits of Trimble Connect is that dimension lines can be transferred from Tekla. It helped our guys massively in a model-based review process of the execution drawings of a steel contractor.
I would see it as something which is attached to a view and something which can be stored. The current views are transferred by the connector of the authoring tool but don’t show the filtering and visibility settings of the authoring tool … it is nice but not the full package. It would be super cool if people would be able to additionally create their favorite views by themselves. Maybe coupled with view filters (coloring), manual coloring, and proper tree-wise hiding/unhiding (we talked about the flexible tree selector in our call). This means the guys handling the viewer are able to prepare something they are allowed to keep. By creating a comment in this prepared view, the dimensions are shown too in the comment. Would probably help to increase the adoption of it. A lot of our guys very much dislike the “we are not allowed to keep it” part of the existing 3d viewers.
I hope this helps. If you need further feedback, please let me know and we can go for a talk.
Dalux:
Yellow rectangular indicator icon to show that the dimension is orthogonal. Yellow is not that great of a color as an indicator.
Dalux also uses the 2D section function … a modification of their 3D section but with black section cut lines for the section plane. Gives one more the vibe of a drawing people tend to love.
Autodesk ACC:
The orange rectangular indicator icon is a bit clearer. The rounding symbol (~) can give one the impression of not having an accurate dimension. I’m not sure if a caught the proper line/edge is the fear one might get by dimensioning.
About the Dalux-like 2D drawings in the 3D model that’s a really appreciated feature… We’re working on being more data and 3D driven, though sometimes we need to take a hybrid approach and use eg 2D views in eg Revit to be able to work with eg measurements, text and annotations in a feasible way… If we could commit and measure 2D drawings (eg dwg or similar) or even better bring/convert 2D elements like text, annotations and similar to 3D views/visible objects somehow (like in @AlexHofbeck s Tekla/Trimble connect example) it would be really valuable and increase adoption.
what would you want to measure, and how do you see yourselves doing it in the 3d viewer?
We mostly take simple measures by clicking in the model, a good snapping function and cursor makes a big difference. Mostly distance between two points, chain distances and area measurements. Also getting fast values like areas or perimeter by selecting an object eg a room is useful, similar to the current feature:
(Side question, I know how to isolate an object and view only that in the viewer, but how can I instead hide that object and show the rest of the objects? Eg hiding the roof?)
existing favourite measuring and review workflows
Agree with @AlexHofbeck s examples, and adding summing (eg areas) of clicked objects :
how would you use these measurements? for example, would you see them attached to a comment, or generally viewable in a version, etc.
Would be great to attach a measurement to a comment or similar as a way to save it. It would also be useful to be able to tag measurements/comments to find them easier (ie we have some defined measurements that we work with on every project and it would be great to be able to search for eg measurement with tag “distanceToFireplace” on stream “nameOfStream”).
Just select a Solid and you will get 2 measurements in both directions
to its neighbored Solids. It is called DYNDIM (dynamic dymensions).
You can control their location by which Face and where exactly you click
to get the desired next elements.
(And you can edit one of the values to change the Solids position or move it)
It is similar in Revit … that would be really cool .
Dalux has a 3-way laser distance measurement, which goes in a similar direction. Select a point and it makes rays in x, y, z axis to show distances to the next surface it hits.