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Author Topic: Help creating facade  (Read 1399 times)

GeraldW

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Help creating facade
« on: May 08, 2017, 06:57:02 AM »
Hey everyone

I need some help creating a facade like this (see attachment).
I tried increasing the Y translation with XSplinePosition, but can´t figure out how to keep the bottom and top straight.

Any solutions?

Thanks,
Gerald

Paul Roberts

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Re: Help creating facade
« Reply #1 on: May 08, 2017, 01:04:57 PM »
Hi Gerald,

Thanks for contacting us. Probably the easiest way to create this is using RailClone's vertical deform and clipping features. For example:

1 - Add a simple box to RailClone to represent the glazing panel. In the Deform settings change the mode to Vertical



2 - Add a spline to the X Spline Input and change the start or end to get the desired skew. The glass panels will deform to follow the spline, but retain vertical sides.

4 - increase the Y size so that array is large enough to cover your facade, extending above and below.

3 - Add a clipping spline to remove the excess facade at the top and bottom.



Please find attached a sample file to illustrate this technique.

I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any further questions.

Many Thanks,

Paul
« Last Edit: May 08, 2017, 01:16:15 PM by Paul Roberts »
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

GeraldW

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Re: Help creating facade
« Reply #2 on: May 09, 2017, 11:23:11 AM »
Hey Paul,

thanks for your fast and detailed answer.
I realize I over-simplified my example. The real project will have a lot of corners in the XSpline and the spline will be kinda long.
So I will end up with a ton of geometry that I clip away afterwards and I manually have to adjust the spline vertices on each corner.

Is there a more flexible solution?

Thanks and best regards,
Gerald

Paul Roberts

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Re: Help creating facade
« Reply #3 on: May 09, 2017, 02:50:59 PM »
Hi Gerald,

Thanks for clarifying. Please find attached another approach. Because RailClone use a grid like array, it is necessary to slice your segment so that it can be used in a grid that will be sequentially offset.

I've cut it like this, the important thing here is that both the top and mid section are an identical height.



Once that has done we need to create the pattern. To do this I have used the Selector operator and an arithmetic expression that uses the modulo function. This is ideal for creating repeating counters that are perhaps more complex that the built-in sequence operators allow. The expression I used was

if(mod(SegmentXCounter-SegmentYCounter,Input1)+1=1,1,2)

Input 1 represents the number of segments over which you'd like the pattern to repeat on the X and Y axis. As you can see this expression is taking into consideration the segment count on the X and Y axis.

Apart from that the rest of the style is pretty straightforward. I've added Start End and Evenly in case they are needed and used a separate generator for this for greater flexibility.

I hope that helps, please let me know if you have any further questions.

Many Thanks,

Paul

Paul Roberts
iToo Software

GeraldW

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Re: Help creating facade
« Reply #4 on: May 09, 2017, 06:23:20 PM »
Hey Paul
Thanks for the help and the max file.
Your solution looks pretty good. Nice idea slicing up the segments, didn´t think of that :)
best regards,
Gerald