creating a canted curved glass curtain wall

[Anonymous]

I am interested in creating a curtain wall that leans back ~15 degrees while occurring on a curved wall. The extras->accessories->wall canted creates one plumb wall and an adjoining canted wall. I only need the canted one, but can't just delete the plumb one. I have also tried to use a conoid, but can't seem to get it to rotate on the Z axis. I have tried the curtain wall objects, but they don't work on compound curves. Any suggestions?

Thanks,
Susan Locsin
University of Washington

[Anonymous]

John,
I am not sure what you are referring to when you say
"the "place 3D view into 2D window"".
What AC or GDL command is that ?
I am unfamiliar with this unless you are referring to
the PROJECT2 command.
Thanks,
Peter Devlin

[Aussie John]

Peter, Open a library part and view it in its 3D window. orientated to a plan view. At the base of the 3D window is a button that says something like "place in 2D view" clicking that will place what everview you have into the 2d window - in this case a planview. If you delete all of the 2d script (important) then this is what will be visible for the object when placed into a plan. This of course is important because if you create an object via ArchiCAD method of saving from a normal 3D window and you need to transform the object with a rotate or like command the plan view would then be incorrect.

If you are creating an object from scratch this is a good way to check that your 2D views are matching the location of your 3D

[Anonymous]

John,
Well I'll be dammed.
I did not see something called "place in 2D view" but I did see
a button called "Add to Symbol" so I hit it and low in the 2D symbol
window is another drawing of the object as viewed in the 3D window.
I always wondered what that button was for but was too afraid to ask and
too afraid to push it.

Do you prefer this function over the PROJECT2 command ?
If you do would you mind explaining why ?

Learn something every day.
Thanks John,
Peter Devlin

[Aussie John]

Project2 is a useful command but it is inflexible in regards to editing. The "add to symbol" ( i couldnt remember the exact term) means that you can edit the symbol adding hotspots removing lines, adding fills etc.

The real power of project2 is if the object is likely to be changing its 3d view (and hence 2d view)- that is more of a challenge to script.

the plan redraw takes a hit with project2 as basically the objects need to modelled before they can be shown on the plan

[Anonymous]

John,
That is very interesting.
I don't use fragment2 much but from what you say
I can see it can offer some important capabilities.
Several things occur to me right away.

As to the issue of challenging 2D scripts, this whole
thing about rotating curved object in two axes with
possibly other variables as well, involves massive amounts
of trig to accomplish and frankly it is too daunting a
prospect for me so I chicken out and use PROJECT2
in these circumstances. (there I admit it).

Thanks John,
Peter Devlin

[Karl Ottenstein]

Back to the canted curved glass curtain wall… 😉

Peter had lots of good ideas. The modified conoid and solid element operations do seem like a direct way of doing the canted curved curtain wall in ArchiCAD, but his idea of a parallelogram and a sweep extrusion with Profiler is better. 😉

Here’s another method using Cigraph’s ArchiForma add-on, even though the question was how to do it with ArchiCAD alone… The reason I post this is because the profiles do not have to be perfect arcs, but can be anything at all! So, not only an ellipsoidal curtain wall, but a wavy one, or whatever.

One of the dozens of things ArchiForma can do is to create a “ruled” surface, which is an extrusion from one lower profile to a completely different upper one. Each profile is drawn as an ArchiCAD fill. Both are selected, the ArchiForma “ruled” button is clicked, and then you are prompted to click on a position in what should be the lower profile and then a corresponding position in the upper one.

In the attached image, you’ll see several colored fills created by magic-wanding offset arcs, or circles in the case of the canted structural columns.

The lower teal/green fill is paired with the blue upper one. After selecting the matching (end) points, the ArchiForma dialog asks for the height and material of the result (among other things). The pairs of fills representing column cross sections were similarly extruded, pair by pair. Really pretty quick: click fill, shift-click matching fill, click ruled button, click to designate lower fill anchor, click to designate upper fill match point, click OK (the settings of the last extrude are remembered by ArchiForma, so once the 30’ value and material are entered, they don’t need to be entered again for similar extrusions).

Due to one image per message, continued in next message…

Karl

[Karl Ottenstein]

(Continued from last message...)

Here you can see the result of the previous ArchiForma ruled extrusion. (No comments on the design! 😉 It’s an example!) You can see some odd transparency at the upper left. I should have used a higher polygon count in the ArchiForma dialog perhaps.

Vertical mullions could be added with additional ArchiForma operations … assuring that the cant angle and mullion location is exactly where we want.

Horizontal mullions are trickier. The only way I see to do them at the moment would be to make a thicker version of the curtain wall (thickness of mullions), centered on the glass one, to intersect this thicker version with slabs of the mullion height, and to use a solid element “intersect” operation.

Karl

PS I have never seen a copy of ArchiGlazing, mentioned by Djordje. But, certainly a purpose-built glazing add-on should handle the mullions/etc with much less work than modeling with the methods here. Anybody out there have it and want to share what's involved in doing the same task as here (or preferably, better: with mullions, etc.)?

[Anonymous]

Karl,
I did an experiment with profiler using a parallelogram as the polygon
cross section and the path made with tangent arcs forming a snaking
path. It looked fine but of course the path of the top of the wall
was a strictly determined offset projection of the base path.
Clearly to have independent control of the top path and the bottom
path would involve the RULED command.
To bad RULED is strictly surface only.
On the matter of the horizontal mullions, could not profiler be used ?
The paths could be determined by using pasted lines from
the 3D top view of horizontal cut planes set at the elevation of each
horizontal mullion.
Just a thought,
Peter Devlin

[Aussie John]

strewth!! conical curved glass - that will be fun to fabricate

I think this exercise does show up some limitations of ArchiCAD - curves especially when related to the Z axis

[Karl Ottenstein]

Peter wrote:
On the matter of the horizontal mullions, could not profiler be used ?
The paths could be determined by using pasted lines from
the 3D top view of horizontal cut planes set at the elevation of each
horizontal mullion.
Just a thought,
Peter Devlin

Good one. More flexibility in mullion profile, naturally, this way. 😉

Aussie wrote:
strewth!! conical curved glass - that will be fun to fabricate

To get back to reality, I just set the "number of parts" (resol) for the extrusion to 7, corresponding to the panels between verticals, and got flat faces between glass panels...a more buildable solution. 😉

Good tip on using cutplane, Peter!

Thanks,
Karl