"New online tool to customise building plans & textures." Topic

Hi,

Following on from the two Normandy building plans I shared here a month or two ago on an account I can't get access too at the moment (the12thplaya) I've put together an online tool where you can customize a couple of plans before printing them out to build from card or foam board. The tool allows you to change a number of options like the scale of the plan, where you want the windows and doors as well as a few roof style options.

The tool also has a texture generator, which can be used for these or other buildings. With each texture you can change the scale, add a colour tint, and choose whether to print a full A4 of the texture or only part of it, which is useful if you only need to cover a small area or if you want to print out a sample before printing out a full sheet. All textures are randomly generated in one way or another.

There are two building plans on the site at a moment, a Wild West outhouse, and a general Wild West building, which can be used for a number of different things.

I will be adding more plans and textures very shortly as well as iron out any bugs you find while using it.

Unfortunately it's not mobile friendly yet (not iPhone friendly anyway), this will come at a later date.

Please let me know what you think.

simplescenics.com

When I click on "open" I just get an error message.

Thanks, would you mind letting me know what the message says and what browser you're using please? I've tested it in Chrome, Firefox and Safari, all on a Mac.

It doesn't seem to work at all in IE but I've not got easy access to IE at the moment to check it properly.

*Edit, it's now working in IE9 but generating the textures takes a while to complete. This is fine in the other browsers.

I appreciate that this probably isn't the place to discuss bugs so I'll try to avoid posting such posts.

I'm running IE8. When I click "open" I get an "error on page" message. Nothing else happens.

I've tested it on IE8 and a Google search shows that IE8 does not support canvases which is used to draw the plans and textures on the screen. There is a plugin file to sort this but I couldn't get it to work, not without possibly rejigging a lot of code so I will probably add a browser incompatible screen in the next version. The styling on IE8 is all over the place too :(

Opens fine in Firefox but you have to register first, so I'd highlight that remark at the bottom of the page.

It opens fine in Safari running on a MacBook, and I filled in the free registration and promptly received an email with my log on password.

Except the system replies that it cannot recognize my password (which I typed in carefully, really I did; more than once). My email to the email address from which the password was sent could not be delivered (of course) as it seems to be outgoing mail only.

Perhaps a user comment feature could be added to the blog that supports this new program. Best wishes!

@FingerandToeGlenn, I mention at the bottom of the home page that some of the plans require registration but I'll make it bigger. Thanks for the feedback. I intend to occasionally throw in a sample plan like the outhouse one that does not require an account, so that you can get an idea of it all to decide whether or not you want to register.

@Jeff Johnson, apologies for the problem you're experiencing. If you're still having trouble could you please try resetting the password if not tried already? The password is encrypted so I can't test your account. Users can comment on the blog post as well as contact me via the support and feedback link at the bottom of the window, but I'll look at other ways to make it a little easier to do so. I'll double check the notifications email address too.

It was a somewhat failed launch, but hopefully within time it'll run smoother for everyone.

I've launched a new version which has ironed out all of the bugs found so far, so hopefully it's a lot more usable now.

Now that those problems are out of the way I'll start working on a new plan or two and some textures to go with them. The next set will be Victorian related.

when your ready for "SIGNS" send me email, boomer_pete@yahoo.com