Shell section

[Anonymous]

Hello,
I am working on a curved roof, and used an extruded shell to do it. Quite straight forward, drew the curved shape on plan extruded it with the shell tool, and then just positioned it on top of my building. But when I look at it in section (image attached) it is not a smooth curve as it should be but it appears faceted, composed of straight lines, which is also the way it appears in dwg once I save it for consultants that use AutoCAD, and, of course that is NOT the way it's supposed to be.
Is there any settings I'm missing, resolution of some sort?
Any suggestions highly appreciated, thank you.

[Barry Kelly]

The magic wand settings have no effect on the profile of a shell.
Barry.

[DGSketcher]

Thought I would update this as I am faced with the same issue as the OP.

It is possible to change the resolution for any shell arc to minimise the faceting, it will still be there but hopefully not so obvious that you have to explain the situation to the client. The solution is remarkably simple and as suggested earlier can be resolved with the Magic Wand settings. Simply draw the base line profile of your roof using lines, arcs, polylines. Change your Magic Wand settings as per the attached to provide enough faces to make the curve still look smooth on section. I have used 12 but you can use more or less to suit. Now select the shell tool with extrusion method and detailed input. Use spacebar + Rt-Click to trace the profile lines and specify the required extrusion length. You can then free rotate your roof into place and if required define the shell contour.

I am using AC22 but this should also work with earlier versions.

[Lingwisyer]

Does this actually increase the curve resolution of the arc, or convert the arc into straight segments? I have had times using other tools where the Magic Wand has broken up my single arc into smaller segments.



Ling.

[DGSketcher]

It does convert the arc into straight segments. So, as a consequence you loose the editable curve, but the appearance is as good as you would get if GS granted a resolution option in the tool. I do wish GS would update the shell tool so that we see smooth curves in sections etc, after all they do retain the original geometry which is displayed if you highlight the shell section, but for now it's a workaround that avoids the need to use elements with complex profiles or put up with crudely facetted arcs.

[Erwin Edel]

I suppose it depends on the radius of the arc, because 'traditional' round zinc dormers look fine when we draw the round part with shell tool. If I zoom in a lot (700%), I see the segments, sure, but when printed it looks fine.

Looks fine in artist impression too.

[DGSketcher]

I am looking at producing a curved roof. The attached shows how the default faceting manifests in a 120 degree arc with 3m radius above a 180 degree 600mm radius (dormer) at 1:20 at 100% zoom. Even at 1:50 it still looks like someone can't draw a smooth arc whereas the dormer looks a lot closer to what is expected.

[runxel]

This indeed a lack of Archicad.
The devs should look into it and convert this value from an absolute to an view relative one (if not abolishing it all).

If you make round profiles you have the same problem. It's not round at all!

[Tim Ball]

I also think this is controlled by magic wand settings, but you may have to remake the shell.

The complex profile is also a good idea if it works for you construction, but the nice thing about a shell is that you can pull and push the shape to amend as needed. Don’t forget you can apply a composite to a shell.

[DGSketcher]

Tim wrote:
I also think this is controlled by magic wand settings, but you may have to remake the shell.

The magic wand settings only apply when you click trace a 2D line profile on the floor plan. If you draw the profile directly as shown in the GS tutorial videos then arcs will default to the faceting shown in my image above.

Remaking the shell may be the biggest issue to using the magic wand method, particularly if your shell is full of holes & roof lights...