Curved Roof Advice

[JaredBanks]

I'm looking for advice on how to do a curved roof. At its ridge and edges it meets 9:12 roofs. At it's low side it's essentially shaped like the letter 'm'. I could either use v11 or v14 once I have it in the office.

From searching the forum, it sounds like Mesh 3d V2 is a good option. Can OBJECTiVE do this? Below the roof I'll be modeling all the exposed curvy beams as well. But that should be easy enough with complex profiles.

While I'm asking, any advice on how to handle the windows whose heads follow the curve (is just making a custom window the easiest way)? Also, the coworker I'm helping likes to use beams and columns that are just chunks of trees that are left in their natural form --so stumpy branches, irregular cross sections that change along the axis, etc. Fortunately I don't think I need any on this project (though you can see an example in the right corner of this image), but it's something else I need to figure out how to do. And has caused me frustration in the past. At the moment we've just had to do masking in 2D, but I'd like to show these logs in 3D in a way that looks decent.

But the roof is the more important question (followed by curved window heads), as I need to start modeling that in a week or so. Thoughts?

As always, thanks so much!

[JaredBanks]

I was just fooling around with the Mesh 3d V2 in ArchiCAD v11 and it felt a little slow and buggy. Anyone else have issues with that in 11 or beyond?

[Anonymous]

Please see this thread.
http://archicad-talk.graphisoft.com/viewtopic.php?p=62004&highlight=roof+using+mesh+tool#62004
Peter Devlin

[JaredBanks]

Peter,

Thanks for making me eat my own words. I always tell everyone in the Twin Cities area that any question you have has probably already been asked and answered on the forum! I guess I didn't search for the right phrase or look back in time far enough. Those sound like comforting excuses...

One follow up question. To make the 'm' curve on one side and straight on the other, did you only manipulate nodes along those two edges? I assume that's what you did, but I thought i'd double check.

Thanks for the help.

[Anonymous]

Hello Jared,
As I remember, I made a rectangular mesh
and inserted nodes at regular intervals along
the edge that was going to be curved.
This mesh was made in AC 8.1 so I must
have made a TrussMaker object shaped like
the curved "eave" so that in 3D I could elevate
the mesh nodes correctly. In AC 10 or later
one can create a complex profile wall in the
shape of the "eave" with hotspots at the
same intervals as along the edge of the mesh
and use the complex profile in the 3D window
to elevate the mesh nodes correctly. After that
copy the mesh and paste the copy and de-elevate
it the thickness of the roof. With the first mesh as target
and the second mesh as operator, SEO with downward
extrusion to get the final shape.
Peter Devlin

[JaredBanks]

Thanks. Of course! Building the profiled eave first makes so much sense!! That should make this actually really easy to build. Sounds like a great exercise to share with the local Usergroup. Thanks again.

[Dwight]

Another - cheap and nasty - way combines a Complex Profile tilted beam "merged" with a conventional roof.

Draw the eave in curved lines and magic wand a wall as wide as the eave height. [to easily create a fill of constant width that follows curves]
Explode the wall into fills.
Paste the fills into a complex profile window.

Place a beam at the eave height with an inclination less than the overall roof.

Place the roof.

Use SEO down to cut the beam with the roof. Then use SEO Down to cut the roof with the beam.

[JaredBanks]

Dwight,
That's an awesome technique. I think with the shape of the roof and accuracy I need I am going to go with the mesh route, but for other projects in the que, and for initial massing of this one, that looks great.

Thanks.