Automated Building Mechanisims

I would like to get a group together to start developing automated building mechanisims, which will actually construct buildings all by themselves. To pull this off, we of course need a group to come up with things to pull this off. It's an idea now, until we come up with a way to make it work, so just reply here if ya wants to help out.

You need a whole group for that Darwin?
Me and Chris have had some fun with automated stair and wall rezzors in the past, not sure what you want with automated building construction, but feel free to IM me and ill whip up something in 5 minutes to meet your needs.

...this should not be terribly difficult, although it could require a great deal of code, depending on the complexity of said structure. I would be interested in contributing to such an effort.

ama and i started work on such a piece of code about... was it a month ago, ama? the ultimate goal would be to have a cad program output a textfile containing the necessary info(sizes, relative positions, and rotations) which you would feed to the masterbuilder object which would then spit out the building. the master builder object isn;t that hard to do, and i haven't spent any time messing with cad outputs, but from some of my other cad coding, it is totally do-able.

The point of this being that you could just carry your buildings around with you in notecards heh.

I have a builder object that reads from a notecard, as well. It rezes cubes then moves, sizes, rotates and sets colour for each cube as directed by the notecard. I pretty much abandoned it because it turned out to be pretty tedious

If anyone wants to stop by my office building I can donate this object to the project.

My maze is based on that object though, the center maze generator shouts out where it wants a wall (or whatever) to a grid of rezers. Which ever rezer is in control of the region the wall will be in does the rezing.

i totally agree about the tediousness, if you have to hand code in the locations and sizes, which is why i want it to interface with a cad program(interface as in cad program generates text file, and scripts reads said text file off a notecard)

I just finished doing some playing with a script that creates objects in a sort of domino effect, each child object spawned containing further child objects to rez. It is theoretically possible to create something really complex with very little effort in this way, if you go about it in an organized fashion.

I am curious, Darwin, what you intend to do with such tech...

Well the ultimate goal is to get objects to intelligently place walls, doors, floors, elevators, stairs, and so on, all in the detected amount of space. The result I assume would be something of an automaticly built skyscraper, with intelligently modeled specifications that will make the best it can with the amount of money you give it to make it with and the amount dimentions of the land you tell it to make it on. This is more than a rezzor, ladies and gents.

I can see that being pretty cool, trying to optimize a floor plan and building plan given some parameters. But its gotta be a rezer first, ya know?

Yeah, this is doable. May I suggest the following order of operations:

1) A 'builder' object creates the frame, based upon input (detection of preplaced markers (?), cash paid to the device, etc.).

2) The frame, based upon its own size and shape, determines the number of floors necessary, then creates them.

3) Each floor, in turn, creates the number of rooms necessary, based on floor size. Floors numbered two and above would insert stairways going down to the floor below. Floorplans would need to be simple, and rooms would need to be [< x, > y] in size.

4) Each room contains one 'builder' which goes about the finishing touches of that room.

Also, there would need to be an input mechanism not only for amount paid, but also for amount remaining in the user's account balance, so that the 'builder' would not exceed the user's tax limitations.

sounds like fun.

I would like a llSetObjectSize(vector size) on primitives ONLY, not on linked objects, and a llCreatePrimitive(prim type,vector pos, vector rot, vector size). That would make this a hell of a lot easier.

or you could sitck one of each type of primitive in the builder object's inventory. thats what i did. only probelm i have run across is hollows and cuts, but i have the individual objects do an llSetText of the commands that have to be done manually.

I don't know how many hollows and cut's it'll be doing, but even if we put the primitives in it still needs to size them...

llSetScale lets you size them. And the hollowness and cuts will need to be done by hand, which is what the llSetText was about, to mark what needs some 'special' attention

Without a way to call the sizes on primitives, there is only one way that I can think of to create dynamic building forms, and that is to have separate builder scripts for each type of object.

Say you had a builder script that was responsible for walls: it would need to maintain a library of wall sizes within its inventory (3x5 walls, 4x5, 5x5, 3x6, 4x6... 3x5 with door, 3x6 with door and so on). Using these modular peices, one could get around the resizing issue, but it would be pretty complex.

Or, simpler from a logic standpoint, but more expensive to create and maintain would be a solution which uses, say, 1m x 1m panels to construct a wall. I don't think that this is feasible considering the cost though...

Ah right forgot that one. Well I suppose if we need it we can do that, ty...


So who wants to help on this project (if anyone)?

For sizing, I did this:

- rez a cube at location, with rotation, and a parameter for chat channel
- cube rezes and says hi on channel
- listen on channel for cube to say hi
- tell cube its size and close listen
- cube resizes itself

It looked really neat when a large room was building.
I needed to wait for the hi message because it took a while for objects to rez sometimes and they would miss hearing the resize message.

This does mean that every prim is scripted, which is bad so I had the script delete itself from the prim's inventory after resizing.

It would be nice to be able to create prims and apply all the settings that are available in the edit window. Imagine controlling the cutting tools, base prim type (sphere, cylinder, etc), object material, etc..

Since I'm a sucker for all of Darwin's team projects I'll jump in and say this sounds cool and I'd work on it

BLASPHEMY I SAY! BLASPHEMY!

Indeed, this sounds like yet another attempt to undermine the pride and craftsmanship of the working man! There is already such a lack of respect for the hard work and creativity demonstrated by building professionals.

What shall we do when our jobs are taken by robots, and the landscape is an endless sea of ticky-tacky houses that all look just the same?

Sir, I demand to know: will you pay for the retraining and repositioning of our workmen? Will you continue to cover their health benefits?

Do not force us to take up the REVOLUTIONARY cause!


-Ana Sandgrain,

Union Rep, Skyhook Construction Company

why would you want a building or anything built by script? would it have an insightful eye in detail in the manipulation of the prims or the slight tweeking of a texture just so. so if you wanna build big bland models go for it. but i like to throw a random texture in there and tweek it and learn something new. I say no thanks to robots

Jack, this is an experiment more than anything else. I don't know how big a market would be for something that would build a big probobly ugly skyscraper, but the tech is what the point is.

Robots, while useless, demonstrate the power of LSL. Yes they aren't creative, and hell they're going to make some ugly buildings (thank you Anada ) but the shear fact that they're possible is what's uber cool.

Well said Darwin!
Doing things for the sheer fact that they are possible (or to see if they are possible) is the founding principle of the Thinktank group Ironchef and I started.

I would be interested in helping out doing the auto-layout planning part since it might be a nice extension of what I started with the random maze generator.

As long as you aren't in a rush cause I have so much to do, and so little time

To toss my $0.02 in (won't even get you a gumball tho)...

Sinclair Valen, I believe, showed me an automated rezzer that builds a model of the Gateway Arch. It uses the original equations that the RL builders used for the geometry.

I was completely awed by how beautiful it looked going up. And it also looked very realistic.

This is in reference to a structure that was completely regulated solely by mathematical equations, sans any subjective elements that would require decisions based on taste. IOW, no replacement for a structure that someone sweated over for days.

Anyway, watching the prims rez and spray out to lock into place is one of my better memories in SL because it shows off What Is Possible and Is Uber Cool to Boot.



"In a wood, two roads diverged...and I, I took the road less traveled." (from memory, so don't point and laugh if I got it wrong)