Clark -

The plan for the shell is definitely for use with panels or enclosures - we'd have to figure out how to draw the gable ends on - currently I haven't found a way to control the geometry to do this just yet. When exported we should be able to see surface area totals. With a variable in the shell we could easily add overhangs to be drawn and calculated.

As to the uniqueness... hmmm. I'll have to look into that - but yes - when you make changes using the 'options' box (changing variables) to the size of one, it will not affect the other (or all - so long as they are identical). This is a known 'bug' or 'feature' depending on how it is used - I did read something about it on the SketchUcation or Google Groups forums.

The exception here is joinery embedded in a timber - copy the timber, edit the component to make changes to identical joinery and they all change, as it is assumed child sub-components of the same parents should be changed throughout - so I usually make the parent unique anyway. I do think you can select multiple instances and change the variables all at once.

I've started to code the timbers with a T, joinery with a J, etc. - and am working out how to get some labels or identifiers into the mix in an easy way for labeling. This would help a bit with the 'uniqueness' problem.

I am also interested in a scale or stretch and snap solution to the length problem - but haven't found a good way to do that yet. It works well with timbers sans joinery - but when we get into angled ends it gets tricky, as the scale tool wants to pull from the center of the timber... and snapping at either end of the angle doesn't work.

Static timber with dynamic sub-components - should work just fine - I would guess you'd have a library of 8x10, 8x8, 5x8, etc. and have joinery on each end. No reason it wouldn't work.

One of my goals is to get the library down to a minimum number of parts and joints for common uses - girts, floor joists, common rafters, etc. etc. There will always be special conditions - in which case you can just edit the component or explode the component and adjust manually.

I'll try to get the dimension beta out tonight.

-Mike