(Version 2.8.13, originally released 02/15/07)
NEW MAJOR FEATURES
Symbility.NET
Symbility excels at providing pen-centric graphical tools to capture all details of most interior rooms and roofs. We have now applied the same graphical, pen-based prowess to exteriors via a new type of diagram that can be added to claim files, "Exterior Plans". This new, unique, cutting-edge feature catapults mobile claims a quantum leap ahead of anything else offered by any direct or indirect competitor on the market today, and it's probably the most difficult feature we've yet developed—certainly one of our biggest accomplishments. This feature provides more effective handling of CAT claims, and enriches the level of detail in your claims and insures greater accuracy.
The goal of exterior plans is, like floorplans and roofplans, to provide a drag-and-drop interface to specify items involved in the structure's exterior, and automatically calculate the item's quantity for any surface. There are two ways to use exterior plans, depending on whether there is also damage to the interior and roof of the structure. If so, mobile claims can automatically create a full three-dimensional exterior diagram based on information already entered for the interior/roof. If only the exterior is damaged, a two-dimensional (cross-sectional) diagram of specific exterior surfaces can be easily drawn in an Exterior Plan diagram page.
Method 1: Automatic Creation of 3D Exterior Plan from Existing Floorplans and Roofplans
For this example we're going to use the following floorplan and roofplan diagrams:
Floorplan for the main level. Although you can't see it here, the "Eating Area" and "Foyer" both have 17' ceilings.
Upper level. Note how the Main level is superimposed so we can be certain the walls line up perfectly with the main level—this is very important to insure that the outside walls line up so they are flat.
The house has roofs at two levels. This roofplan diagram contains only the roof over the garage and foyer. Again, the Main Level floorplan is superimposed to insure the roof shapes are positioned correctly.
The Main Roof diagram contains the rest of the roof at the very top of the house.
One very important point of note is that the roof shapes in the Garage Roof roofplan, which cover the garage and foyer, seem to occupy the same space as some interior rooms. Take a look—although the Garage Roof roof shapes are directly above the garage (i.e. it is at the same height as the upper level), the bedroom offset, and portions of the bedroom and closet are also in that same space. In addition, the Foyer extends all the way to the top of the second level (17') and also happens to share much of the same space as the shed roof shape. That's not a mistake—it's actually the case, although really only a portion of the roof shapes are needed in the actual Exterior Plan. In the illustration to the left, the red area shows what space of the Garage Roof roofplan is occupied by interior rooms.
Rather than needing to "subtract" the space (illustrated by the red area) from the Garage Roof shapes to avoid a conflict, one of the most elegant features of the Exterior Plan is that any space that is already occupied by an interior room will be automatically removed from a roofplan where necessary. As we build the 3D exterior and see the final result this will become clearer.
We're going to use these existing floorplans and roofplans to create a 3D representation of the entire house's exterior (luckily mobile claims will do most of the work for us). When a new Exterior Plan diagram is created, it is initially blank. Use the AutoCreate button (shown at the left) to show the AutoCreate Exterior Plan window (shown below), which lets you specify how the 3D structure should be built. Even though we have floorplans named "Main Level" and "Upper Level", mobile claims doesn't know that the "Main Level" floorplan is at ground level (it's just a name, after all). You use the AutoCreate Exterior Plan window to specify how the various existing diagrams go together, by dragging-and-dropping thumbnail images of each diagram (on the left side of the window) to the main section on the right side of the window. A shortcut is to just double-tap the thumbnail, which places the floorplan/roofplan in the most logical position.
Double-tapping the "Main Level" floorplan adds it as the bottom level in the 3D exterior plan that we're building. We can also set the height at which the floorplan is above the ground. Note the 17' ceilings of some of the rooms.
Because the main level has rooms of two different heights—8' for most of them and 17' for the Eating area and Foyer—there are two different vertical positions that the next diagram that we add could go (either at the 8' height or at the 17' height). Because the 17' high rooms on the main level span the full two stories, we drag the upper level to the 8' height.
Dragging-and-dropping the Upper Level and positioning it at the 8' height (as opposed to the 17' height).
The next diagram we drag-and-drop is the "Garage Roof" roofplan, and again the software doesn't know if it should be above the main level or the upper level, so we will specifically place it at the 8' height. Remember that the space already occupied at this 8' height will automatically be removed from the roofplan.
Dragging-and-dropping the "Garage Roof" to the top of the Main Level (which is also where we placed the Upper Level. Note that for each floorplan or roofplan you position above the ground floor, you can specify the "floor thickness" (essentially the height of floor joists). The default is 12 inches.
Finally we can drop the Main Roof diagram and place it at the top of the two story house.
Dragging-and-dropping the Main Roof above the Upper Level.
After pressing Done, you see the magic happen as mobile claims now follows your instructions and constructs a fully interactive three-dimensional model of the entire house, complete with all doors and windows defined for the interior rooms.
In the resulting 3D exterior illustrated at the right, note the portion of the roof shapes from the Garage Roof roofplan that remain after the rest was removed because it existed in the same space occupied by the interior rooms (and refer again to the red area in the illustration above).
Here's what you can do with this 3D exterior shape:
Rotate fully 360 degrees either horizontally or vertically. Beside the familiar Pan button on the toolbar is the Rotate Horizontally button and the Rotate Vertically button. Once the direction to rotate is selected (you are in horizontal rotation mode by default when you first view the Exterior Plan) rotate the exterior shape by dragging any part of the shape except for doors and windows (if you tap a door or window accidentally it will move the door or window position—just use the Undo button to reset it). This allows you to see every exterior surface (which is important because each surface provides dropspots for dragging items to, so the quantities can be accurately calculated).
Any annotations that you can add to other diagrams can be added here. This includes scribbles, callouts, photos, voice annotations, etc. The annotation is rotated along with the rest of the diagram in perfect 3D perspective!
You can select one or multiple surfaces. Each surface acts similar to a room on a floorplan, so all the same rules apply (tap to select and see dimensions, drag a selection box around multiple surfaces to select them, double-tap any surface to open the item pane, tap-and-hold to add/remove that surface from the selected item's quantity calculation).
You can select and manipulate (move, resize, delete, copy, paste) any door or window subtractions. You can also add new subtractions to an exterior. You can also add block subtractions (introduced in version 2.6) which can be useful for chimneys or walk-up steps.
The Exterior plan can be resized/reshaped by dragging a surface's handles. Note that this is a solid 3D object, so dragging the handle of a surface will potentially affect many other surfaces. If you're questioning the practicality of this when you've already precisely measured the floorplans and roofplans upon which the exterior is based, consider that you can drag the handle of any surface at ground level downward to increase the height of the entire structure. This allows you to create an Exterior Plan based only on a roof shape, if you didn't want to draw a floorplan because there's no interior damage. The bottom of just a roofplan could be dragged downward to form the exterior walls (of the required height).
Any changes made to floorplans and roofplans CAN affect the exterior plan, but only if you re-build the exterior using the AutoCreate tool. It won't automatically affect an existing exterior plan.
On any Exterior Plan you can use the AutoCreate tool to create a new 3D exterior at any time—but be aware that any existing 2D or 3D exterior shapes will be deleted. This cannot be undone.
Method 2: Manual Creation of 2D Exterior Plan
If there is no damage to the interior or roof, and you only need to calculate quantities of surface areas and linear measures of vertical exterior surfaces, it can be quicker to just draw the exterior surfaces manually using two new shapes found in the Shape Selector dialog box: rectangle and triangle . These shapes work just like interior room shapes. Any number of these shapes can be added; combine one or more shapes to create compound shapes using the new Merge Shapes command . Because they can be merged, resized and re-shaped in any way (the Vertex Mode tool can be used) they can be used to make any shape needed to represent the exterior surface.
Note that a 2D shape can be added to an Exterior Plan diagram that already has a 3D exterior shape.
Method 3: When There's Only Exterior and Roof Damage
Suppose you have a situation where there is damage to both the roof and vertical exterior walls, but nothing significant in the interior such that you don't need to draw a full floorplan. As mentioned above, you may want to simply create a roofplan, use it to build a 3D exterior shape (of only the roof) then drag the floor the the shape down to give the walls under the roof the height needed. But this may not always work, particularly when an upper level doesn't have the same footprint as a lower level (as in our example).
In situations like this, the following creative approach works well. Floorplan diagrams don't need to be used to draw all the details of all interior rooms—it's perfectly acceptable to draw one giant room which is really the exterior footprint for the whole level, with no interior walls whatsoever, taking measurements of the exterior walls as you walk around the building (a Disto laser rangefinder really helps here). This will give you exactly what you need for the AutoCreate tool. You don't even have to add doors or windows, since they can be added directly to the 3D exterior shape (if needed at all).
SF items can be dropped into the middle of any exterior surface to generate a quantity equal to the area of that surface (the polygon bound by solid black lines). The quantity will either include or exclude the area of any doors or windows on that surface depending on how this property has been set in the Database Manager (version 2.7) and either way can be toggled either way with the Include/exclude subtractions property button (). Here is a summary of how various quantities can be generated.
When a SF item is applied to a surface, similar to when applying an item in the Wall Editor, the height of the surface is displayed, indicating the current height used in the calculation of the item's quantity. To alter the height used to calculate the quantity, tap the dimension label and enter a new height with the Disto or the Feet/Inches gizmo. This applies to either a vertical wall or a sloped roof panel (something that you currently can't do in roofplan diagrams), in which case the height dimension refers to the height on the slope, not the vertical height.
In addition to using less than the full height to calculate the item's quantity, you can also define the precise area to attach the item to by using the command Set Area to Attach in the item's context menu (tap-and-hold). And of course the related enhancements introduced in this version (applying the item to all unused area and re-shaping the defined surface area with Vertex Mode) also apply.
Appearance on the Estimate and Printouts
On the estimate, each Exterior Plan section (one section per diagram page) contains only a single Exterior details block. The details shown in this block depend on whether the Exterior Plan diagram contains a 3D exterior shape or 2D shapes only. If the diagram contains a 3D exterior shape (and possibly some 2D shapes as well), four different views of the exterior shape are shown as thumbnail images (at different rotations 90 degrees apart) along with any annotations exactly as they appear in the diagram. The total exterior surface area, the footprint surface area, the total surface area consumed by subtractions and the building perimeter figures are also shown. If the diagram contains only 2D shapes, just a single thumbnail image of the Exterior Plan is shown.
If printed while viewing the Exterior Plan diagram, it appears exactly as it does on the screen—allowing you to rotate the shape to the desired angle so that a specific aspect (and perhaps annotations you've added) is shown before you print. If printed while viewing any other page, 4 different views (4 pages) are printed—the same 4 views as seen on the estimate page (2D exterior plans are always just a single page).
