What the hell.....

[creative1986]

....happened to this place. I take a sabbatical and the whole thing goes to hell.

Maybe Mike should come back and scare some new life into the thing if thats possible.

[RicodJour]

The Pro version does have an ACAD plug-in for imports. Not sure if the free version does.

R

[Señior Popcor]

:

Thanks, Rico. I also have Blender, and accordingly:

"You can only export DXF from the Pro version. SU Free will export Google Earth and Google Earth 4 formats. Both are KMZ files, which are actually in ZIP format, just structured, not generic ZIP, which helps GE know what it can import or not, etc. Change the file suffix and open the ZIP. Inside there is a models folder which contains a DAE file. The DAE is "Collada" format -- an in-progress standard for

3D model interchange. So to do anything except Google Earth with SU Free, you have to have something that will read Collada/DAE (and you have to know the trick about KMZ/ZIP). There are free programs like Blender that will import and export DAE, 3DS, and DXF, and so can be used as a converter. I have not explored Blender's modelling and rendering capabilities, but it has a very enthusiastic following. So the round-trip workflow is: [ACAD] -> DXF -> [SU] -> KMZ -> ZIP -> DAE

-> [Blender] -> 3DS -> [ACAD] or [SU] -> KMZ -> ZIP -> DAE ->

[Blender] -> 3DS -> [ACAD] -> DXF -> [SU] I hope this helps, August"

Well see (I'll let you know) how that works out.

[Señior Popcor]

:

Yes that's what you've suggested before and thanks again. The way I'm all over the place, I should invariably get around to it. I currently have at home (borrowed from the library); 'The Complete Idiot's Guide To Building Your Own Home'; 'Alternative Housebuilding'; and 'The Timberframe Home'.

Sounds great. Let us know how it goes. Good wood-in/on-wood joinery rocks.

I really like the honest, simple, yet complex designs/geometries that you can get with post-and-beam, and the "art"-- the lattices and joinery-- that feels more of an emergent property of the work, rather than a conscious afterthought tack-on. The building is the art. PAB frames also frame, accentuate and play with space well, and the wood timber element gives it more of a natural and human/residential scale and/or quality. Oh ya, and you can also take many PAB frames apart and rebuild/re-use them, and they last long.

Unsure about blobitecture.

[creative1986]

Depends. I went down to Bedford a couple weeks ago to look at a 19th century barn someone was giving away and decided it wasn't worth the effort. The elements had gotten to the structure and prior to that the animals had given it a thorough thrashing. Imagine a century of cows chewing on stuff. Some of the upper structure, the hay mow was salvageable but the guy said take all of it or none of it, so I walked.

15 years ago I helped a guy in Kentucky disassemble an 18th century real log cabin (18" wide logs, square cut, double dovetail) and transport it to West Virginia and reconstruct it. What a job. Analyzing old wood is a science and I'm in kindergarten. I pounded a steel drift into the center of a 12"x12" column and it went all the way in with little effort. Not good. In fact, I had to use another drift to pound the first one all the way through and out the other side to get it out. On another one, more toward the center of the building, the drift bounced off the surface of the column, it was solid maple. I like the look of the stuff, the post and beam, where, like you said, the craftsmanship becomes the art of the thing, and a constant reminder of the effort involved, not to mention the cost. The harder the wood, the easier to work.