SpaceDesign


Space Design Toolbar.jpg
Attributes and Reports

SpaceDesign is an add-on for SketchUp for defining attributes and creating reports from SketchUp components.

  • report on Dynamic Component attributes.
  • Add your own attributes and report on them.
  • Combine and count components with similar attributes.
  • Extend cost and other fields (multiply by quantity).
  • Total extended cost and other fields.
Basic Functions

There are four basic functions:

  1. Define attributes to be used in editing and reporting
  2. Edit Attributes for components
  3. Define which attributes you want to include in your report
  4. Generate the report.

Space Design is included in the Render Plus Combo Pack and can also be purchased separately.

SpaceDesign can be very easy to use for simple reporting - such as a count and cost of components placed in a model.

It also has very powerful features - such as as length, area and volume calculations which can create more complex reports, but will also be a little harder to use.


Problems - Contact Us

Problems - Contact Us - Don't Give Up
If you are trying SpaceDesign for the first time, and have problems, Don't Give Up.

  • Between the combinations of SketchUp versions, Windows versions, and machine types, sometimes somethings goes wrong. It anything is not working, don't give up. Let us know.
  • If you have problems with downloads or installation, contact us right away at support@renderplus.com.
  • If you have other problems, or questions on how to use IRender nXt, place them on our Forum.
  • Download Problems - If the download doesn't start, try again. Sometimes our download service gets messed up, If is still doesn't start email us and we will send you a direct link to try.
  • Installation - During installation, you need to select the proper version of SketchUp. If you have problems contact us right away.
  • SketchUp Toolbar - If the application does not appear on the SketchUp tool bar - look under plugins. If there is an entry called SpaceDesign Load', click it.
  • Other Problems - - Contact Us - Don't Give Up.


What's New
  • Added substitutions for lengths and volumes in metric and other units. See Substitution Codes
  • Added additional, custom lines to report after total.
  • Use SketchUp 8 Volumes for %v% volume calculations.
  • Added a feature to extract attributes for all Components in a model, edit them in Excel, reload them, and save them Components into a library.
See: Define Attributes
  • Added No_Drill attribute setting to make components which should not be drilled into
  • Fixed to report on walls from RpWallMaker
Getting Started

First Quick Report

After downloading and installing SpaceDesign, follow these steps to try it out.

1. Select "SpaceDesign" from the SketchUp Plugins menu.


Toolbar

SpaceDesign Toolbar

Space Design Toolbar.jpg

  • SD - loads a dialog which lets you define how SpaceDesign will be loaded when you load SketchUp.
  • Attributes - load the SpaceDesign Attributes Wizard.
  • Report - load the SpaceDesign Report Wizard
  • Quick Report - generate a report with the current settings.


2. Add a couple Components to your model (Regular Components or Dynamic Components)

Edit attributes.jpg

3. Right click on a component, and select "Edit SpaceDesign Attributes"

4. Enter a value for Cost and Description



Make report.jpg

5. Click the Report icon

Make sure the PDF report is selected, and click Create Report


Sample report.jpg

You should see a report like this:

  • The image is the current image in your SketchUp drawing.
  • I added a second instance of the bench so that you could see how count and extended cost work.
  • The text is set on the Text and Fonts tab of the report wizard.
  • See: SpaceDesign Report Wizard for more on report formatting.


Next Step - Define Attributes and Report Fields

Space Design Attributes.jpg
The Define Attributes dialog will show:

$area, $count, $comp_desc, $dname, $iname, $layer, $level, $material, $name, $path
The values for these are determined by the components in your model, and cannot be edited.
See: Special $ Attributes
  • SpaceDesign attributes added to your components.
  • Dynamic Component attributes
    (These are preceded by DC:. You can report on them, but need to use the Dynamic Component editor to change their values.)


Adding Attributes

Add attributes.jpg

You can add additional SpaceDesign attributes using the Add Attribute button.

After entering a name and clicking OK, you the Edit Attribute Dialog will be loaded to make changes.



Edit Attributes

AttributeSettings.jpg

These are available on the attribute spreadsheet, and the Edit Attribute dialog.


  • Name - The name for your new attribute
  • Header Text - The heading which will appear on reports
  • Minimum Width - The minimum width for reports. (in average character size)
  • Format - Text, Numeric, Database or Currency. (See Number Formatting )
  • Decimals - If Numeric, this is the number of decimal places to use
  • Extend From - calculate this field by multiplying another field by the Count field.
  • Right Justify -
  • Multi Line - attribute text contains carriage returns.
  • Blank if Zero - report as blank when values is 0
  • Show Total - total this column
  • Skip if True - component is not displayed in report if this attribute is true.
  • Do not Drill - do not drill into this component when processing sub0-components
  • Is a List Box - attribute contains a list of sub attributes. See: List Attributes
  • Allow Report - Attribute is used for reporting.
  • Allow Viewing - Will be viewed on the Edit dialog, but cannot be changed.
  • Allow Editing - View and edit on the Edit Dialog.
  • Suppress from Report - attribute is used to calculate other fields for the report, but does not display directly on the report.
  • Allow Substitutions - special fields, such as %l% for length, are replaced in attributes. See: Substitutions
  • Set on Instance - attribute value is set on the Component Instance. (You can set a default value on the Component Definition). See: Set on Instance
  • Calculation String
  • Test Calcuation - test the current calculation string
  • Add %attribute% to calculation - adds a reference to an existing attribute to the calculation string.
  • Calculation String - string to be calculated
  • See: SpaceDesign Calculations


  • List in Attriubute - this attribute will be listed in the other attribute selected.
  • Prev - save changes and navigate to the previous attribute.
  • Next - save changes and navigate to the next attribute.
  • Apply - save changes and reload. (This is necessary if you change the type to Numeric, and want to test numeric calculations)



Define Report

Report attributes.jpg

Select the attributes desired on the report.

In addition to the SpaceDesign attributes on you components, you can include:

  • $count - count of components with the same attributes
  • $name - the name of the component
  • $description - The description stored in the component definition. (Or the Component name if the description is blank)
  • $layer - the layer on which the component is placed.

Check boxes

For each attributes, use the check box to include it in the report.

Report Title

This is used for the title of the report, and also for the name of the file for the report.


New in Version JI07

  • Old Attributes - recognizes and uses attributes from SpaceDesign Free
  • skip_if; attribute - component is not processed if this attribute is true.
  • Boolean attributes - either true of false
  • list_in and list attributes which place several attributes in a single cell of the report.
    See: List Attributes .
  • Note: The new version contains some features - such as Multi_Line sub-attributes. These are only available in the Pro version.

New in Version JH26


Advanced Techniques

License Cost

Features

FAQ

Question: I am looking for a SketchUp Plugin that will give a comprehensive bill of materials, I have had trouble finding a plugin that generates a report respective of a components alignment in relation to the axis of the whole model. Cut List 4.0 does this for me and is free, I assume that RP Report does something better than Cut List 4.0 so if I should I purchase RP Report, will it meet my needs?

Based on your request, we are creating a new version of RpReports, called SpaceDesign.

RpReports is very powerful, but it takes a lot of work to set up the projects. SpaceDesign is much easier to use for simple reports.

Here are the proposed features for the new SpaceDesign version (projected price $99.00)

Attributes on Components

  • Place attributes on components in one of 3 ways:
    • Place the attributes in the model before saving the .SKP file for the component.

(In this case, the attributes will automatically be included when the component is placed from the disk or from the 3D warehouse.)

    • Place the attributes in the component definition after placing the component in your model.

(In this case the attributes will apply to all instances of the component in the model, but will not apply to other models which place the same component. Unless you the receive the definition into a component library.

  • Place the attributes on the Component Instance. This option allows you to set or override attributes for each instance of the component. But the attributes will not be saved into the Component Definition or Component Libraries.

Reporting

When you are ready to generate a report, all attributes will be read from all Components. You will be provided with a list of all attributes names, and can select which attributes should be included in the report, and change to order of the attributes.

This system works OK if you only have a few different components in your model, and only a few attributes. (If you had 500 attributes and 40 components, then you would have to enter 20,000 attributes values one at a time.

If you have this many components and attributes, if would be better to have an automated system to edit the attributes in a spreadsheet and apply them to the model. We plan to add that feature to the SpaceDesign.

Beta Tester

If this is of interest to you, lets discuss a Beta test program where you can be our "guinea pig" as we develop this, and then decide whether you want to purchase it when we are done.


Downloads and Installation

There is a 30 day Trial Version for RPS products. This is a fully functional version, with watermarks or other text added to indicate that it is a trial version.

Follow the links on the Downloads Page to download the latest version.



See also

SpaceDesign: