An open source home in the BIM workbench

[PMac]

But if you want to make the rafter longer you have to go edit the sketch right? Man I'd love to just be able to be able to say this is a 2x4, 14' long, and the end is cut at an angle like "this".

Yes, edit the individual sketch for that specific rafter base extrusion. Any changes in the sketch will affect any rafters cloned from that base.

My problem was I needed a step down in size from 240mm to 90mm and the angled cut on the end. You're only after the angled cut at the lower rafter end. I too resisted this method as repetitively tedious but in the end I just didn't see an alternative way to show stepped lower rafter ends with angled cuts for the fascia board/gutter support. Yes, it would be nice to be able to cut any member at any angle and recalculate the size/volume/data for the cut structural member.

The next problem you'll run into is when a quantity survey of the individual material your truss members or rafters is required, the cloned items now have no size/volume/area data to read. You'll be doing a manual survey. (An aside, I leave the ends of raked studs square without cutting the ends to the top plate rake angle so that I can readily extract the length data for a quantity survey in the future. Not technically correct but I can live with slight overlaps on stud rakes / plates on my drawings.)

[OverkillTASF]

https://gitlab.com/Tyler-2/starter-home ... home.FCStd

Screenshot_2021-03-24_09-10-56.png (70.45 KiB) Viewed 1510 times

Time cruuuuunch.

I finished most of the roof structure and got some decent elevation views:

Screenshot_2021-03-24_09-05-00.png (46.5 KiB) Viewed 1510 times

But now I'm working on the floor plan part. I had pretty good results with Shape2dView:

Screenshot_2021-03-24_09-00-49.png (74.29 KiB) Viewed 1510 times

Except... now I have a problem. According to the Arch Tutorial this is trivial to export to a DXF along with the other electrical lines, labels, and dimensions. But I can't get this (the "Floorplan" group) to export to DXF. I can get the Shape2dView to export, but not the dimensions etc. The IGES exporter seems to be confused by the fact that I've selected a group. The SVG exporter mangles the dimension text. The PDF exporter doesn't give me any good options for choosing what to export and at what scale.

I need to export the floorplan to DXF to send this to the foundation engineer but will need a little more flexibility when it comes to the government-people.

[paullee]

Looks good

[jtm2020hyo]

I like your idea, we need more open projects, I will create soon another one.

just curious about your MEP, how did your metered and calculation?

[OverkillTASF]

Looks good

Thanks! Now if only I could get the damn thing exported looking good....

I like your idea, we need more open projects, I will create soon another one.

just curious about your MEP, how did your metered and calculation?

I think MEP is "Mechanical, electrical, plumbing"? Honestly I just threw some lights in based on my memory of prior homes. Kind of in a rush to get the plan submitted. I don't really know much about lighting design and honestly, I hate the design part of all of this. I just wanted to start building, but I couldn't find any plans that were good for my purposes, and the local architects have all been too busy for this little project. Bah. So here we are!

[OverkillTASF]

https://gitlab.com/Tyler-2/starter-home ... home.FCStd

Screenshot_2021-04-06_08-16-57.png (14.01 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

For some reason this section view is showing the window to the left "properly", but is also including a weird "from the top" copy of it that I don't think is anywhere in the model in this orientation.

I turned off `All On` for a bit to try to narrow down what some of these items might be, particularly this one flat plane hovering just below the surface of the slab:

Screenshot_2021-04-06_08-19-04.png (6.66 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

It's "Large window framed opening" which is just a rectangle that definitely doesn't intersect with the slab like this.

Screenshot_2021-04-06_08-21-36.png (153.57 KiB) Viewed 1362 times

[mtnhaus]

@OverkillTASF thanks so much for posting your detailed progress! It's been super helpful.

I am also working on designing and hopefully eventually building a small house in the U.S, similar shape and construction (wood studs). I am a heavy SketchUp user but I am trying to get away from it, however, the FreeCAD learning curve so far has been pretty steep. As a programmer, I do love the parameterization and python features, but like you, I am running into issues with imperial units in many places (I wish I could build in metric...)

Were you able to complete your home plans in FreeCAD? I am just wondering if it's worth the time investment for someone that will be working in ft, in (and fractions).

Thanks!

[OverkillTASF]

I would absolutely NOT recommend using FreeCad at the moment for this. I am almost "finished" but have a ton of regrets and weird results I'm not happy with, and in the end, getting good section views / plan views for the code submission process requires so much manual work that I dread every small change. Some of this is my unfamiliarity with FreeCad perhaps but at this point I have a lot of hours in it. Ha

- The entry of Imperial measurements broke at some point... was fixed... and broke again. Did I notice this in time?
- I have used snapping extensively, yet when I zoom in I to some of the corners there are a lot of not-coincident lines and corners.
- There was an issue somewhere along the line with the internal units maybe, resulting in my placed beams and stuff ending up at, for instance, 2.5 + 1/32" when they should have been 2.5". I don't know how this has contributed to things but I have some odd lengths in places that might be a combination of these bad conversions and the not-actually-coincident corners? I can no longer remember why my trusses for instance are +1/8".
- Getting good 2D technical drawings generated automatically isn't seemingly possible yet for arch purposes and requires a ton of manual work with an SVG editor.
- The object type that FC was using for section views changed, and all my section views were invalidated and have to be rebuilt - with a LOT of individual objects having been selected.

Overall I'm kicking myself (and in a REALLY bad place with trying to build my house) for using something that's still under such heavy and active development (Which is a GOOD thing!) for a real, and important, task.

At this point, I have abandoned making additional changes in FreeCad - which saddens and annoys me, and any more extensive changes that I can't just do by nudging things on the SVG around, I'm going to have a professional draftsman make. I'll upload the latest version of the CAD file, but at the moment I'm still "homeless"!

[ragohix769]

[...]
At this point, I have abandoned making additional changes in FreeCad - which saddens and annoys me, and any more extensive changes that I can't just do by nudging things on the SVG around, I'm going to have a professional draftsman make. I'll upload the latest version of the CAD file, but at the moment I'm still "homeless"!

I understand your pain, and the need for a LOT of work to complete professional grade Architecture work in Fcad (I too have real trouble every day, but FCad it's better and better every day, in this past year I see the better it's getting very quick), but: what you regret here, IMHO, has no real sense, because what's the alternative that you had in the beginning of your journey with FCad?

If you want to use a commercial program to make your BIM project, you was always able to do, and even now it is, because you can always export geometry there, no lock-in. Even if you had bad results or at least not worth the work done (in your words), you have always the door open to other solutions, always.
In contrary: if you had studied, and bought some commercial BIM solution, now you will be strictly closed there, for ever. And all your work and investments will lost if you change it at some point.

And your contribution to the FC (anche to this incredible smart community that's behind it), your studies to understand the limits and the (big) problems in this process of creating a complete BIM in the real professional world, are always there; IMHO it worth the effort, always.

Only my 0,02 of course

[OverkillTASF]

For my journey personally, I should have just paid a pro to do it.

I think FC is _neat_, and I am a big supporter of open source software in general, to a fault (though, I'm not in a place to make financial contributions like I'd like). But while I have (maybe?) contributed to FC, my use of it, and my optimism about what I could do with it, has cost me a LOT of time, money, and my family's living situation is still very bad.

I would hope that no one out there is such a fan of open source that they would choose to go down the path I've been down with my family, just to support in a small way an open source program. I know I would be _insane_ to do things the same way if I started over.

Please note I think FC's goals are great, open source is great, the developers who have and will continue contributing are great; If you're using FC for hobby purposes right now, that's probably fine. But if your livelihood/shelter/home/career depends on it, IMHO it's too soon to adopt it.

I think I could withstand my plans being locked away in a proprietary CAD format if I were in a warm house!

Edit: I don't blame FC for my current situation - But my choice to try to do this myself using FC is my fault, and I would definitely not do it again. It might have gone a little better if I had used different software. But if I started over I would have had someone else do all this work - This isn't for hobby purposes, it's for a home.