Drawing Non Standard Rooves

Hi, Drew’s video, “Drawing Non Standard Roof Types” is interesting, apparently almost any shape so long as its painted with a PlusSpec roof material means that “PlusSpec recognises it as a roof and quantifies it”. I’m trying to do this and having no success, can you give me a detailed procedure? The picture below shows a Pluspec roof and then a shape. I did a take off before I painted the shape - 73 square metres. Then I painted it using the eyedropper to pick up the roof texture and painted the shape. Another take off, no change, no recognition.

Non Standard Roof.jpg

Hi Arnold,

Thank you for your post.

I believe there may have been an update to the software since the video was made. To get the material to estimate you need to make the custom roof on the right into either a group or component, then instead of applying the material to the faces apply it to the group/component and it will estimate. If you want it to appear in a certain section of the takeoff, please put the roof on the correct later.

Please note that if you’re ever reapplying a material to geometry you’ve drawn using SketchUp tools then the material has to be applied in the same way it is in PlusSpec (i.e. if it’s applied to a group/component or a face then it needs to be applied there on the new geometry).

Would you be able to please let me know if this works for you?

Thanks Grant, that’s working now.This makes PlusSpec much more powerful since I can create more complex roofs with Sketchup tools than I can with PlusSpec tools and now I can convert and quantify them. Nice. I bet this will be possible somehow with walls too?

Hi Arnold,

Yes that’s correct. For any object that PlusSpec cannot generate or fully generate you can use the same principles that I explained for the roof as long as the material is applied in the same way that it’s applied in PlusSpec. This way you can create and use a material anywhere with PlusSpec, then reapply it to wherever it needs to go.

Hey Grant, this is enormous. If I’d known this I would have been much quicker to sign up. I thought I was exploring the limits of PlusSpec. This is worthy of a whole webinar and you should be telling Sketchup users about all this flexibility.