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"Basic" best practices - kitchen/bath


-andrew-

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Hi all,

 

Though I've had fZ for some time, I've only now just considered using it for some small personal home remodeling projects.

 

The first one we're tackling is our relatively small master bath.

 

Anyway - Having never really used components other than windows, doors, and a few other basic items, I'm wondering what the best "basic" practices may be for the various more significant features of baths and kitchens, specifically:

 

Cabinetry (parametric?)

Fixtures

Shower Enclosures

Backsplashes/tile work

 

Our primary use at the moment for the bath (and in the next year, the kitchen) is for visualization, so another question is whether anyone can recommend a more comprehensive materials library/resource so as to avoid hunting textures one at a time online...

 

To date we've been using SketchUp and Thea Render which is OK but takes a lot of manual hand-crafting ;)

 

I also tried the Home Designer Software demo from Chief Architect, and its plan-building is really fast but the rendering is pretty basic, and the materials are very limited.

 

I don't think fZ actually does parametric cabinetry...?

So, any thoughts on this process are greatly appreciated.

 

thanks,

Andrew

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Hi Andrew,

 

When I think of "basic best practices" I think of things like organizing objects by Layers, using Grid and Object Snaps to ensure things align properly, and such.

 

For small custom jobs, you probably don't need to worry about Components (and while you are correct that parametric cabinetry is not yet available, we are investigating that for the future).  The only reason I would consider Components would be if you can't decide between different cabinet styles, and you could use Components to switch from one style to another, but for a smaller job, that could just as easily be done by changing the visibility of different layer(s).

 

If you are looking at cabinets or fixtures from specific manufacturers, many companies offer 3d models that can be downloaded from their site and simply Imported into formZ.  If they include Smooth Geometry, it may be best to first set the Display Resolution to 0% before Importing (or set that in the Import Options) to reduce the total number of facets that are generated for the data.  

 

The Object Doctor tool can be useful to diagnose (and often to fix) geometry that has been imported from other programs.   Be especially careful if you are importing data from SketchUp as it is notorious for generating bad data.

 

Using the Mesh tool on surfaces that are to be Tiled is an easy way to generate a grid on the surface.

 

There are many predefined materials included with formZ -- just choose them from the Material Parameters: Libraries:

 

post-5-0-50875800-1421939011_thumb.jpg

 

There are also many companies that offer collections of materials and textures that you can use, but which is best for you depends on the types of surfaces that you intend to use.  Perhaps some other forum members can recommend their favorites.

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Thanks for the note. I'd love to see parametric components....

 

Regarding materials - yes, I'm familiar with the predefined materials. They're great, but as you can imagine, when doing interior design, there are massive variations....

 

(A procedural texture generator would be great!!)

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