Trowel Control Panel

To begin using Trowel in Blender, look for the Trowel Control Panel in the N-Panel.

The Trowel Control Panel is a collection of handy operators designed to assist you with various tasks during Trowel usage. It's divided into four key sections:

1. Brick Set Creation
2. Manage Collections
3. Laying Bricks
4. Export

Creating Brick Sets

• Choose a Brick Category and Type from the options in the panel. If you're not particular about a specific type, just go with the default settings.

• Click Build Set. This will add a new Brick Set to your scene, organized into its own collection.

Understanding Brick Sets

• Low-Poly Brick Set:
• Includes four basic sizes:
  • Full
  • Half (1/2)
  • Quarter (1/4)
  • Three Quarter (3/4)

These sizes mimic real-world brick bonds, providing a foundation for your construction. They are used for basic layouts and measurements.

• High-Poly Brick Set:
• Initially, these bricks appear similar to the Low-Poly set, but they are designed for customization. You can replace them with more detailed models or modify them directly in Blender for a more realistic/stylized look. For instance, you might use another add-on like One Click Damage.

Custom Brick Sizes

If you want bricks tailored to your specific dimensions:

1. Add a brick to your scene with the dimensions you need.

2. Select this brick, hold Ctrl, and click Build Set. Trowel will then calculate and create the other sizes (Half, Quarter, Three Quarter) based on your full-size brick.

Manage Collections

Once you've created a Brick Set, its collections are automatically added to the respective fields (Lowpoly and Hipoly) to indicate to Trowel which bricks to use.

• Manual Collection Replacement: If you're working with multiple collections, you can manually replace them in the Trowel Control Panel to switch between different sets of bricks or styles as needed.

• Sync Collections +:
• This button's main function is to sync selected collections with Trowel's Geometry Nodes Groups, eliminating the need to manually place collections in your node setup each time you switch or update them. To use it, select the Brick Bond node and then click Sync Collections +.

By holding Ctrl and clicking this button, you can switch the selected Brick Bond to a different one as chosen from the Bond Selection in the Control Panel.

Laying Bricks

This section enables you to lay bricks using the selected Brick Bond and the object(s) you've chosen. Trowel offers several Brick Bonds for you to choose from:

• Stack Bond: Bricks are laid in a simple, straight line, one on top of the other.
• Running Bond: Each row of bricks is offset from the row below, creating a staggered pattern.
• Common Bond: Features a combination of running bond with headers every few courses, traditionally every fifth or sixth course.
• Flemish Bond: Alternates between headers and stretchers in each course, providing a decorative and strong bond.

By selecting your preferred bond and the objects in your scene, you can start constructing walls or other structures with the aesthetic and structural properties you need.

Export

You can export your Trowel result from the Geometry Nodes setup into your scene in two formats:

• As Instances: This option is available for bricks that have original bricks in the scene (essentially default Trowel usage). Choosing this maintains memory efficiency since each brick is merely a reference copy, not a new object. This is ideal if you plan to export these bricks to a game engine where instance rendering can significantly optimize performance.

• As Mesh:

• Default Click: By clicking on this option, each brick will be converted into a unique object with its own geometry. (e.g., 1000 bricks result in 1000 objects)

• Ctrl + Click: If you hold Ctrl while clicking on As Mesh, Trowel will combine all the bricks into a single object. This simplifies the scene hierarchy and can be useful for modeling or when you want to treat the entire structure as one piece for further modifications or exports.