3D board & batten

[Anonymous]

What is the best way to produce an material that can display in 3D (Internal & OpenGL) a realistic board & batten siding.

[Stephen Dolbee]

Cadimage offers their "Accessory Pack". It appears to do various types of siding. Does anyone have experience with this?

Steve

[Anonymous]

<<I thought about that approach, too - but just using solid element subtract, since that does the same thing as your object I assume?

The problem I see is that in a residential setting, the boards dive behind the brickmould around the windows, and yet the batts abut them. Thus, for your object (I assume) or a solid element subtract of the "board negative" to work, the window trim would have to be embedded in the extra thick wall. Not possible AFAIK.>>

This is true. Also depends on your preferred detail at windows.

But at least it limits the amount of manual work required. And looks ok in a small 3d view. A little fussing with the window may get the specific effect you require.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Karl wrote:
A possible trick to deal with openings is to appy a material to the walls that uses a fill with the desired centerline spacing between vertical lines ... and invoke TrussMaker and tell it the size of the batts.

Well, I needed some B&B and so tried this technique... sort of. The fill for the B&B walls was a rotated 12" siding ... vertical lines at 12" spacing. I used Find and Select to select those walls, copied/pasted and dragged the copy to the side of the elevation a fixed amount. Deleted undesired lines and adjusted the wall-end batten lines. Changed the batten lines to a unique pen, and put them in my hidden line layer. Dragged them back on top the elevation, selected them, had TrussMaker turn them into battens. Finally, I dragged the created batten-object to be adjacent to the wall from plan view (recall that TM creates the "truss" exactly on the section line ... which for an elevation is some distance away from the wall).

In the image below, the result works. The belly band above needs to come out of the wall the thickness of a batten for the batts to dive into it. And more flashing. 😉

Karl

[Anonymous]

Bravo Karl,

Simplistic yet beautiful. I will give this a try.

[Ignacio Azpiazu]

I use SidingMaker and RevealMaker (ObjectsOnline) for just about everything. Great objects.

At some point I edited the script to carve metal panel profiles. Editing the script, or developing a similar script, to model the protruding battens for the purist board & batten look seems like an option --the window object can be a window object and attach to walls without necessarily having to cut into the wall.

[Anonymous]

Ignacio wrote:
Editing the script, or developing a similar script, to model the protruding battens for the purist board & batten look seems like an option --the window object can be a window object and attach to walls without necessarily having to cut into the wall.

Unfortunately the problem will be the battens not trimming to windows/gables.

[Anonymous]

Ignacio,
You suggest one can make a window that installs battens on the surface of the parent wall. I understand how to do that.

But, are you saying that the battens will not cover other openings or extend beyond the parent wall like "SidingMaker" which is apparently just a rotated wallhole, or have I made a false assumption about what you
are saying ?

Thank you,
Peter Devlin

[Karl Ottenstein]

Peter and Ignacio,

I think that to take other openings into account requires the geometry that is fed into the wall accessory objects by that add-on. So, I would think that if we wanted an ideal board and batt solution, it would arise from modifying an existing wall accessory GDL object to generate the batts. (These objects are recognized by the add-on by their subtype, so just duplicating one and giving it a new name causes it to be seen by the accessory.)

By being a wall accessory, the batts would adjust dynamically as windows and doors are moved, inserted, deleted or resized.

Karl

[Anonymous]

Karl,
I think you are absolutely right.
A wall accessory add-on is necessary for edge detection
so that other openings and wall edges are detected.
That is what all Archicad add-ons do as as far as I can tell.
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Peter Devlin

[Anonymous]

Karl wrote:
Peter and Ignacio,
I think that to take other openings into account requires the geometry that is fed into the wall accessory objects by that add-on...By being a wall accessory, the batts would adjust dynamically as windows and doors are moved, inserted, deleted or resized.
Karl

Everyone,
Karl is correct...a wall accessory solution is exactly what is needed. The good news is that this accessory will be available in the very near future. I've recently tested one being developed by a 3rd party developer.

This accessory will provide a solution to all the conditions discusssed thus far in this thread. It will do:
"Tongue & Groove","Beveled Board","Simulated Logs","Board On Board","Board & Batten", etc

Its simple and easy to use - I'll post an update with where it can be purchased when its ready.

Thanks,
Dan K