TurboFloorPlan Usability - From a beginer's viewpoint

[bantar]

In the help forum under View Manager topic, I went off topic, so I'm creating a new thread instead for this topic....

Bantar said:

Although, I must say that this is one of the hardest floor plan programs to understand.  For instance, the tutorials are dated and show tabs that have since been renamed.  The fact that you can have two floors installed and not know it, etc.   But, after sticking with it a bit, it's generally easy to use.    And with this forum, it's getting easier.  Thanks again!

--brian
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Allan Chesney said:

Hi Brian,

It is very easy once you get to know it. To me it is easier than most I have tried but I have used it most so I suppose that us understandable!

TFP may also seem a bit more complex initially but this may also be that it is a much more technically capable program than most. Taking this into account it is very easy.

What tabs did you notice have been changed? - I will see if I can get them fixed?

Yes you can add two floors if you are not careful. The program needs a warning message to alert you as it only takes one click to insert it. You can generally so it though in 3D view as the two different floor textures compete with each other and create random patterns on the floor surface. The problem usually arrises if 'auto floors' is turned on so any room created automatically gets a floor. I always leave it turned off.

Allan

[bantar]

Going from memory, I'll try to touch on those things that I thought were difficult for me to understand (and by the way, I'm in high tech and can pick up things quickly, but I'm not a designer nor a cad user - I say this to give you a feel for where I'm starting in the learning curve).   While there are many great things in TFP, I'm only presenting this data to help the dev team see what I see as a newbie.   In no particular order...

1) Site Plan - I wanted the house drawn, and not the grass, so I ignored this aspect at the beginning.    Then, later, after drawing the house, I figured out how to resize the land area.    I drew a site boundary and then noticed the house was in the wrong place.   You can't draw a box around the house and move it.   You might right click and move.   There are certain views where the move won't work even if you try.    I think I finally had to use the arrow keys to move it around.   Must be a trick that I don't know.    All of the wall moving and cabinet moving is a dram and easy to use.  I only had a problem with the whole house.     And somehow, I moved the house, but left behind all of the cabinets and appliances.

2) Moving house to a specific setback.   I ended up moving it, then measuring, then moving then measuring.   

3) Tape Measure - Has markings on it, but it needs a pointer that tells me the exact length.  I can't read the little ticks inbetween the marked settings.

4) Site Plan - I ended up making the land match the size of the site plan.  I know look back and see that it might be useful to have land be larger than the plan.   They are not one in the same.   The reason is that you can draw and view the surrounding areas.   But, at the beginning, I didn't have time to mess with landscaping, so my focus was strictly on setting the house on the land plot.

5) Tutorial - It appears that the video tutorials were a few versions back.    Program settings and tab names have changed quite a bit since then.  For instance, it said to turn X, Y, and Z on, but these were already set by default in some cases.   It has "Notation" in the video, but "Annotation" on the tab name.   

6) Floors.   I ended up creating 2 or more floors.   At first I was nervous to delete them, but I finally did and the got them to work.  I'm fairly certain that this was created due to errors in the room (which I'll cover later).

7) Walls - connecting.   I stretch walls to the next wall and most of the time they connect, but sometimes they just get close.  Could be because they are not really aligned.    It was not obvious that they were not connected.   I just fixed one last night that I didn't notice until I was directly overhead looking down.   I saw a gap between two walls in a 3 wall T intersection.   It would be nice if I could select this wall joint and say join!

Room division - Created a LR / DR combination wit exterior walls on 3 sides, then dividing these two rooms from each other and the rest of the house was a 3 way wall intersection in the middle of the house (not exterior wall).  One of these 3 walls was partially fully height and partially 3' high.   Since these rooms aren't really walled off completely, I needed to use the room divider to split them.    Well, it would seem that either connecting to the half-height wall or the fact that the T intersection wasn't joined correctly, the room division failed to accomplish what I wanted.    Since I was in the walls part of drawing, and not dealing with floors, all of the floors had the same default flooring pattern.   So, when I added a floor to the hallway, it assumed that the LR was part of the hallway.   Since the floor surfaces were identical (hardwood), I didn't notice the double floor being added.   Later when I changed one of the floors to something else, I could see the floors competing in the 3D view, but didn't know how / where to start debugging this problem.   Now, if I see it, it would take seconds to correct.

A nice feature addition for room divisions is to highlight the enclosed area when selected.  Or maybe have a view that puts random colors in each of the rooms so that you can see what is separate from what.

9)  View manager - I didn't get it, thus my original post.   I did get the filtering concept immediately.   I created multiple views in view manager but didn't know what it was doing.  I had multiple windows with different things (views) in them, but didn't know where they came from.   Need a good explanation of views and manager.   The view properties only show you trivial items.   IMO, it would be easier to understand if each view had the filter list and camera settings in the properties dialog.   Go to view X, change the filter, etc.   The model that exists now is WYSIWYG, then store that.   I picked up on this, but got lost in not knowing how to update a view.  The words "Set current" didn't imply to me to take the current view and persist it.  Instead, I thought it meant to take the currently selected view and put it on the screen.  "Make this view the current one in the window."

10) Wall lengths - I love the select a wall to move, then click the length to adjust.   However, not all walls work this way.  Especially, partial walls.   The system won't draw a line letting me change the length.  It would be nice if the properties dialog allowed walls that are not connected on one side or another to have their lengths manually entered.   For connected walls, using the existing method is fine.  Trying to get the length just right by dragging it is almost impossible when you are down to the fine changes (lets say < 1/4" ).

11) Interior dimensions - I can draw these for connected walls, but those pesky walls that are not connected on both sides don't always accept these.   I draw the line and it disappears (or does not set).   It appears to work for walls that the system recognizes as room dividers.    Secondly, sometimes the dimension floats with the wall and sometimes, it disconnects and quits floating.  This might be a bug or could be a user error.  I don't know.

12) Elevation - Why is this not in the properties dialog?   It's nice that it's on a right click for convenience, but I normally gravitate to the properties page to set properties.  This isn't available there.

13) Flooring surfaces - Changing each room to a specific pattern.  I was doing this manually room by room, but then went back and rewatched the tutorial video and saw the trick!

14) Disappearing Doors - If you have a small wall, such as an entry way or hallway and a door present, then use the properties dialog to enlarge the door, it will be automatically deleted if it no longer fits on that wall.    Rather, it should just refuse to allow me to save the property changes.   I first found this on a door that was too far right on a wall, then lengthening it made it go past the right edge of that wall.   The program deletes this door when this occurs.

15) Movement in the 3D model.   It would be nice if the movement borrowed from the gaming industry.   In gaming, one moves in 3D space by using the keyboard AND mouse together.  The keyboard moves you front, backwards and sideways and the mouse changes the look up or down.   It's kind of clunky to move with just mouse only.

16) Documentation - One of my pet peeves on documentation is when it is a circular reference.  Instead of explaining what it does, it says fill in this box to change this value.   That only helps if I know what it does.  The documentation has a mixture of good detail and some circular references.   Concepts are what the newbies need to understand.    For instance, it took me a while to figure out how to draw angled walls.  Searching this forum helped, but not the tutorial and documentation.

If I think of more, I'll post it here.  This is what I can remember so far.

Regards,

--brian

[Doug.S]

3) Tape Measure - Has markings on it, but it needs a pointer that tells me the exact length.  I can't read the little ticks inbetween the marked settings.

Look at bottom of screen....while using tape the length is reported in text format such as ft-in etc.   current and total

You may have to do tool settings...turn on "commander"

[Doug.S]

6) Floors.   I ended up creating 2 or more floors.   At first I was nervous to delete them, but I finally did and the got them to work.  I'm fairly certain that this was created due to errors in the room (which I'll cover later).

Use caution with ceilings as well or you might install more than one and the renders will be blotchy

[Doug.S]

12) Elevation - Why is this not in the properties dialog?   It's nice that it's on a right click for convenience, but I normally gravitate to the properties page to set properties.  This isn't available there.

It actually is there....properties, behaviour, position, _____

[bantar]

Elevation...   I see it on cabinets, etc.  But the one that I was remembering was creating a sunken floor.  The floors don't have elevation as a property element.   For tape measure, I now see the measurement.  Thanks!

[Allan Chesney]

Hi Brian,

Doug has commented on a few of your observations, I will comment on a few more - probably briefly as I am using my phone. We are away for a few days and I left the laptop charger at home!  

First just a comment from your last post on elevating floors - normally if you elevate a floor you want to elevate everything on the floor also (including walls etc) so the floor elevation is done by changing the Floor Level in Building Locations rather than just the flooritself.

Back o the others:

1) I you want to move everything you must remember that you may have things on different locations and can only select one at once, unless you override this temporarily in Settings/ Workspace (untick 'select only current location' or something like that). Then on the Plan view do Edit / Select All.  now you can move everything on all locations at once. You may also have to turn off Collision on the Status bar.

2) If the building is parallel to the site boundary you can set the grid distance and turn Snap to Grid on.

3) OK

4)Yes, Terrain and Site are different - terrain may go to the horzion

6) Best way to handle floors is to turn auto insert off. Then set the view to rendered plan (second icon after the plan icon) and insert the floors. In this view you can see them appear and that you have inserted the right type. In this view you can select them also and see the selection - this applies to the Room Division also (your point 8 ).

7) Walls will only connect properly if you drag the wall to at least the centre of the wall you are trying to connect to. In fact I nearly always take it right through the wall and delete the bit that sticks out the other side. This takes another click but ensures a pefect join as the wall will heal itself and corrupt  walls and resulting crashes are avoided.

8 ) In addition to the point under 6 above, room divisions also need to go to the middle or through the wall to connect..

9) Personally I think View Manager is largely a leftover from the parent program Envisioneer where it does make sense. Envisioneer produces Construction drawings from the 3D model and opens with 5 Views already assigned. one is the Model (or 3D view) all the others are the 2D drawings (eg Plan, Elevations, Sections, Site Plan etc) produced to print and submit for building development and construction complete with full dimensions, text, enlarged views of sections, architects details, builders details etc. Since TFP is only designed for 3D visualisation, these views really become superflous.  They still work but in the parent program they are your master index to the dozens of working drawings that you produce while the 3D model may be your only 3D view.

10) Wall lengths can also be set in the Commander Bar

11) Interior Dimensions will show if walls connect (see 7). Yolu can also use Aligned Dimensions which will work anywhere, including just to measure distances (to the boundary for example)

12) See Dougs comment and mine in the intro to this post.

13) See comment on 6

14) Agreed - a warning would be nice

15) Sorry not into gaming so can't comment - sounds OK though.

16) I find documention on most programs is never adequate and I know what you mean about circular refernces. My phone documentation refers to all the various levels in a menu but only shows the on end level on the page, so if you find what you are looking for in the index it refers you to the page but you have to go back through many other pages to find the top level of the menu - very frustrating. The documention does need updating. Envisioneer has been so maybe TFP  will also soon.

I am also working a getting started pictorial guide too but was waiting for V16 to finish it off. Hope to get around to it soon.

Allan