Membrane Tool

[Paul King]

Can we please have a dedicated Membrane tool that:

• Maintains a constant thickness no matter the surface angle or geometry.

• Can be placed by draping, to auto wrap the nominated surface of a detected or defined membrane -zone volume as defined by object edges or other constraints (much like the 3D zone tool), with pre-nominated membrane turn up or turn down heights at edges and at penetrations of that surface

• Can respond to SEO changes to a surface - for example membrane will drape into SEO channels cut into roof slabs.

• Can be refined and stretched by manually inserting additional corner nodes and edges

• Can perform semi-automatic lap-over or lap-under operations with other membranes or objects (such as door and window flanges), so seams and lapping junctions are visible in 3D.

• Can be modified by associative penetrating objects - for example door and window openings should trigger wall wrap membranes to fold into the associated rough opening reveals, and to follow changes to those openings.

• Can be associative with the elements defining the edges of the wrapped volume if these shift around

• Can have 2D cut section characteristics that are graphically useful and scale responsive - for example use double edge lines, where inner edge line is solid, outer edge lines are white to create visual separation from other elements.  Cut core could appear dashed

This tool is important because:

• Composites are painful to work with when the intent is to reflect a membrane - membrane extents seldom closely match the substrate extents, so if you want to do better than just create a crude impression of a membrane, you end up needing to chop up the substrate into tiny pieces in order to reflect that some parts of the substrate are covered with membrane, some parts are not, and that these do not always (or even often) resolve by a materials priority based approach, because there are always unique localised variations to any material priority rule.  Such workarounds are also likely not to survive significant design or geometry iterations without extensive rework. 

• Philosophically, membranes as building elements are at least as important as walls or roofs.

• A decent membrane tool would finally make 3D modelled details a plausible mainstream part of the architectural design/documentation workflow, and would allow schedules to accurately describe membrane areas, corners and joints.

[Nuge]

Great idea and much needed

You make it and i will buy it!!!!

[Vasileios S_]

I did not know that I need this until I read it. We want that for sure!

[Benjamin Dani · Accepted solution]

Hi, 

I'm glad to say we took notice and added this detailed idea to our wishlist database.

You can refer to this number in the future: WISH-12638. 
I really hope it will be implemented as soon as possible. 

Kind regards,

[Paul King]

Great.  Very happy to test if it is developed!