$count attribute in Space Design

Dear Render Plus Team,

We are testing the trial version of Space Design and we have few questions about new formulas and creation flexibility.
Is it possible to use the %$count% attribute to count other elements like:
$count * area * price/m = total price for all linear meters
and at the same time
$count * area * price/m2 = total price for all m2
and at the same time
$count * volume * price/m3 = total price for all m3

I noticed that the extended_cost = $count * cost (but all of them are predefined and the result is calculated automatically).
In simple words, I want to substitute the predefined COST with my prices/m2 or m3 and use the $count in any formulas as needed.
I hope that it is possible.

Kind regards
Gregory

▶ Reply to This

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Render Plus on December 5, 2011 at 2:24pm

This can be done. But it gets kind of complicated.

Here is an example for area:

Area Attribute

Area is especially complicated because we have to have a face to calculate the area of. You can define the face to use for area in one of two ways:

(See: http://www.renderplus.com/wk/SpaceDesign_Area_w.htm)

Specifying Faces to use for areas

Use Layer Name

Place the face in a special layer:

If you place a face in the layer _SP_AREA within a component or group, it will use that face (including scaling) to determine the area of the Component or Group

Identify face in existing component

To define and use areas for a component:

Add a new attribute, and use %a% in its calculation.
(Or %a-m% for square meters, %a-cm% for square centimeters or %a-f% for square feet.)

After placing your component in a model, right click on it and select Define Area

Select a face in the component to be used as the area.

Note: This feature will only work if a single face in the component can be used to calculate the area.

Attribute for Area

Then you have to create an attribute to use for the area. or for area * price per square unit

To create an attribute called, area:

Create a new attribute (e.g. area)
Set it as numeric and set the number of decimal places desired.
Set it's calculation as %a-m% - meaning area in square meter.

Cost per Square Meter

If the cost per square meter is fixed for the entire project, then you can use a constant value. If it is different for different components, then you will need to create an attribute for it, and enter a value for each component.

After creating the attribute, you can right click on each component to set the cost.

Cost of component based on area:

Now create a new attribute - which will be the area times cost-per-m2

Set the calculation to: %cost-per-m2% * %area%

Note the drop down box above the calculation area makes it easy to copy and paste the %attribute% formats:

Click on it to bring up a list of attributes to use in the calculation.

Combining Area and Area-Cost

In this example I used one attribute for area, and a second attribute for area cost.

I could have used just one attribute - area cost - by including the %a-m% in the calculation string:

Use: %cost-per-m2% * %a-m% - instead of - %cost-per-m2% * %area

Extending the area or area-cost by count:

(Not you cannot use %count% in a calculation. Extensions can only be done using a "Extended" attribute.

Create a new attribute for the extended area-cost (area-cost * quantity)

Final Report

I included all the variables in the report. (This is a good idea during testing) You could suppress some of them from the report later if they are not needed)

Hopefully you can see how to do this for volumes and lineal meters as well.

I have attached the .SKP file which created this report if you want to see how the attributes are set up.