Floorplanner Tech Blog » Jeroen

Fresh floorplanners

Jeroen — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 21:24:51 +0000

Get your daily dose of fresh floorplanners at www.floorplanner.com/fresh
This pages displays a list of the 10 last saved design of public floorplanners. Some things still have to be tuned but already it gives a good idea of the type of floorplans people are creating. More to come….

Export CAD to Flash: CAD2FLASH

Jeroen — Sun, 03 Apr 2005 20:16:52 +0000

Over time we have developed our own technique to convert 2D CADdrawings (DWG & DXF) to SVG and Flash (SWF). Flash is vectorbased just like CAD and can be used for easy webviewing of all sorts of technical drawings.

Check out an online demo of the Suite75 conversion webservice.

Click on the Select DWG button to convert a CADfile from your computer (if you don’t have a drawing available download this sampleDWG)
After you have selected the file, it will be uploaded to the server for a realtime conversion and the results are sent back to the browser so you can see the CADfile in a flash interface.
or see a sample of a converted drawing : SWF or SVG

This conversiontool has the following features

- Preserving linewidhts and styles
- Maintains layerinformation
- Skinnable by using seperate interface files

Experiments with Groove

Jeroen — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 20:31:55 +0000

Groove is an interesting platform to develop for. With 192-bit encryption, robust storage, and an architecture designed from the ground up for all types of networks, Groove does much of the heavy lifting for developers. Being a company with an inquisitive mind, Suite75 regularly works on various prototypes to explore the possibilities of the Groove platform. We are especcially interested the sweetspot that lies between Groove’s private collaboration model and powerful (personal) publishing tools like Weblogs and RSS.

Blogging tools like Radio Userland and Blogger, along with emerging peer-to-peer platforms like Groove, are evolving into relatively easy-to-use frontends – back-ended with sophisticated distributed computing technologies like SOAP interfaces, RSS engines, and P-to-P messaging infrastructures

Below you can find links to some of our Groovy experiments as posted on one of Suite75’s Weblogs :

Public Groovespace Experiment

The Groovelounge

Groove – Radio Interoptool

Groove Acces Point experiments

Groove HTTP Server

Web to Groove

Groovespace Publisher

Groove POP – RSS – SMTP

OPML Export

Suite75 developed Groovetools and custom solutions for the Groove Platform from 2001 to 2005 and played an active role in the global Groove community. In april 2002 we hosted the first worldwide Groove Developer Conference and our Groove Weblog has been one of the best read Groove related websites around.

CADviewer for Groove

Jeroen — Fri, 30 Apr 2004 20:41:11 +0000

The Suite75 CADviewer is an useful tool for all Groove users who work with CAD-files. The tool lets you review 2D CAD-drawings alone or realtime with other space members.

When “navigate together” is on, a space-member will see the same drawing as you. When a member zooms or pans the drawing, all other joined members will zoom/pan along in real-time. Collaborative viewing is fast because Groove stores all files locally.
Existing layers can be switched on and off and Xref drawings are supported.

The tool works together with the Groove filestool. It scans all the filestools in that particular Groovespace for compatible visiofiles and displays them in a treeview in the Visioviewertool. By clicking on the files in the treeview you can display the files. By clicking on the navigate together in the tool you have realtime collaborative capabilities for multiple members in the space.

The CADViewer is based on the Suite75 Shared Viewing Framework and offers real-time shared viewing of DWG/DXF files within a Groove Shared Space. This Framework is designed for a variety of viewers to be used within Groove. Any viewer based on this framework will have functionality like:

-Fast and secure standalone or realtime shared file-viewing
-Auto discovery of all viewable files within a Groove Shared Space.
-Save comments to a Discussion Tool
-Print the current view to any printer

The CADViewer was a free tool for Groove 2.5 , promoting the use of Groove within a design process and showcasing the possibilities of solutions provided by Suite75 for the building industry.

UPDATE :The development of the CADviewer tool has stopped and the tool will NOT be updated in the future

Realtime collaborative Wiki in Groove and Flash

Jeroen — Thu, 05 Feb 2004 20:30:18 +0000

Tim Knip’s FlashHyki is a collaborative Wiki based on Flash and Groove. It offers realtime decentralised collaboration without the need of a server. The Hyki doesn’t run in the GrooveClient but in a seperate application created using Flash and Flash Studio Pro. All “cards” are stored in a Groove filestool using Groove WebServices.

The term Hyki was introduced by Ray Ozzie in July 2003

Has anyone yet attempted to create what I guess I’d refer to as a “Hyki” – that is, a character-by-character real-time collaborative (Hydra-like, Groove Text Tool-like) editor with automatic creation of real-time linked sub-documents when CamelCase words are typed, etc. ??

Hugh Pyle immediatly took on the challenge and built a great proof-of-concept which inspired Tim Knip for these explorations on the possibilities of Rich Flashbased tools that can easily work within as well outside the Grooveclient.

Download the FlashHyki here (1.4 Mb).

DISCLAIMER:
- The FlashHyki should never be used in a production environment (ie. where you have any Groove spaces which are important or sensitive). It may have adverse effects. There are no warranties of any kind, and there is no support. Use at your own risk.

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
- Groove 2.5 or higher
- Latest Flash

How does it work?
When you startup the FlashHyki you have to specify Account, Space and a Files Tool using the combo-boxes. On first run the HomePage and a temp-folder are created in the FilesTool you specified. Now just start typing whatever you want, the current page will be saved some seconds after you stop typing. Any words written in ‘CamelCase’ are automatically transformed into hyperlinks. After clicking such a hyperlink a new page is added to the FlashHyki and you will be redirected to this new page.

Flash to PDF,SWG or X3D

Jeroen — Mon, 18 Aug 2003 20:18:01 +0000

An example of how to use a Flash interface to collect all sorts of userdata, store it in XML and export this data directly to formats like PDF, SVG and VRML.

How to use the demo:
If correctly you should see a colorful 2D grid on your left side. Below the grid you can choose which output you will see on the right side of the screen. You can choose between SVG (XML driven graphics), VRML/X3D (3D) or PDF (Adobe Acrobat)
When you drag the points of the Grid any changes will be instantly displayed in the plugin window on the right side.

Groove-Radio RSS tool

Jeroen — Thu, 23 Jan 2003 20:58:35 +0000

This tool enabled a connection between Radio Userland and Groove 2.5 using Groove Web Services. You could synchronize your Radio-Weblog with a Groove Discussion Tool, send incoming news-stories to a Groove Discussion Tool and retrieve files from a Groove Files Tool and publish them to the web through Radio Userland.

Jon Udell : Until now, team blogging has meant that a group posts to a common weblog. This setup does that too, but it also does something I find much more powerful — it synchronizes the inputs to the collaborative process, as well as the output.

Paresh Suthar : There have been many references to Tim Knip’s Interop tool – a very cool application that uses Web Services to push/pull data to/from Groove to publish blog entries. The more I thought about this, the more I started to see what could be a paradigm shift with respect to content creation and publication. Tim demonstrates how to take a personal activity like blogging and shift it into a group activity so that multiple people can contribute.

Chad Dickerson : I’m actually using Tim Knip’s Groove interop tool to post this entry. I’m impressed enough that I’ve asked other folks on the technology staff here to download it ASAP

The development of this tool has stopped. There will be NO updates in the future

Realtime 3D collaboration

Jeroen — Tue, 14 May 2002 20:47:54 +0000

The Architect0r tool for Groove is a simple 2D/3D design tool. You can draw volumes of different sizes and colours over 5 vertical levels in a 2D interface and can view the results realtime in a 3D viewer giving you instant feedback.

It is primarily developed to be used in the early stages of a design process to quickly set up series of layout variants for the design of a building, city plan or an interior design but due to the generic character of the tool it can be used for many different purposes.

Based on Groove, the Architect0r is allowing a group of people to zoom, pan, rotate and even design together in real-time.

Designs can be saved within a Groove space or exported to DXF/DWG format so they can be viewed with the Suite75 CADviewer Tool for Groove or used in almost any CAD software.

The Architect0r was a free tool for Groove 2.0, promoting the use of Groove within a design process and showcasing the possibilities of solutions provided by Suite75 for the building industry. The development of this tool has stopped. There will be NO updates in the future