how can i create sphere curtain wall or wall ?

[Anonymous]

i am trying to use the curtain wall tool to create sphere form building, for example, the national grand theatre beijing.

however, i can't use any method to create this building shape in ArchiCAD.

i realized that AC can't slant a polylined curtain wall.

so do you have any alternative to do so?

[Dwight]

If the curtain wall tool can't do it, make it from a circular array of individual complex profile wall ribs for the mullion verticals and an interstitial array of muntin/glazing complex profile wall parts.

[Thomas Holm]

So impressive, and yet so simple to do! Thanks Dwight!

[Dwight]

Of course there are some tricks to making this work quickly that i know so that whole thing including the artlantis rendering took less than 10 minutes.

In making the fill for the mullions, draw the shape in the floor plan window with an arc or spline and magic wand a wall to it that is the depth of the mullion. Make the wall have a fill. Explode the wall and you have a sinuous fill of equal width. Copy the fill into the complex profile window.

For the next profile - the glazing and muntin, return to the floor plan, undo the explosion and change the wall thickness to the glazing thickness. Explode this and copy the skinny fill into a new complex profile window for a glass profile that follows the mullion. Of course, this makes impossibly curved glass but who cares since it is a fantasy anyways. So if it need to be real, magic wand the spline in the floor plan with the magic wand set to fixed intervals for flat glazing segments that follow the shape.

Viola. The one from Twelfth Night, not the stringed instrument.

[Anonymous]

Dwight wrote:
If the curtain wall tool can't do it, make it from a circular array of individual complex profile wall ribs for the mullion verticals and an interstitial array of muntin/glazing complex profile wall parts.

seems nice idea,

but i still don't really know the exact procedure

can any one elaborate to me?

thx.

if for real project, in floor plan, can it be shown in each floor plan?

[Dwight]

You have the whole answer in my last two postings. But you now need to look at the reference manual as to how to make a complex profile.

[Thomas Holm]

[Dwight]

Strategy AND tricks! What more can there be?

YES< using the correct floor plan and wall element display settings, the story will cut the model correctly.


Now that i have studied detailed photos of the beijing theatre [thanks to Google Earth] I see that it is not a sphere composed of curtain wall elements, but rather row of curved, tilted panels covering an elongated lozenge.

If it is only an approximation, you should use the ellipse element in the object library. In this example, I've used two cylinders to SEO [intersection] two ellipses and inserted a third slightly lower to bridge the gap.

[Dwight]

And if you use the ellipse to define the general form, convert it to glass and then apply the ribs as I originally described. Use a section cut to guide you. Resize ribs horizontally to match the varied form.

SO i guess by now you understand that this is not automatic as you might expect.

[Erika Epstein]

Beautiful work Dwight!