You are having trouble because you have no patience for the attention it takes to make an organic form in Archicad. It IS excruciating, so be warned!
Also, now that i look at my pillows, they seem a little affected..... cartoonish. I would simplify them in the future - less like a pierogi.
What do they call pierogis in Norway? Probably have a recipe to fill them with pickled herring.
With all that said, here's how it is done. The objective is a tilted cushion, perhaps with a little corner slump, and not a cheap hotel pillow with no "give." Floppy, not stiff, eh?
You will make two meshes with the same perimeter. You must think about it as a plausible cushion shape as it mooshes down into the sofa.
One mesh goes up, One mesh goes down.
Start with the top mesh.
Use some lines offset from the perimeter as guides, but the process is to, one-by-one elevate nodes in 3D until you make the top mesh. The edge should roll over a little like a seam would. Of course, all ridges smooth, etc....
That much is obvious, but the TRICK is:
To DUPLICATE THIS MESH, and lower it by 3mm.
Make the bottom mesh. This is easy because the upper mesh tells you the nodes and their heights for the edges, and dish out the rest. In the 3D view.
In the material assignment, the top mesh gets a perforated material that is not completely opaque - this 'scrim' hides the bad job you did making the mesh.
You can also make the meshes as if the cushion was on a flat surface, save them as an object and use ArchiRotate to tilt them. This is more geometric but is much faster since cushion quadrants can be symmetric.
So, yes, it is a lot of work and you need to become a digital cushion artist.
Dwight Atkinson
