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Author Topic: Railclone Pro brise soleil Help  (Read 2600 times)

Sketchrender

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Railclone Pro brise soleil Help
« on: March 04, 2015, 04:06:04 PM »
Hi

I am new to RC Pro.
I have a curved building , and need to place  brise soleil along it.
I can place the one I want but I am having trouble adjust the width of BS off the Facade.
Can somebody help Please.

Thank you

Philip


Paul Roberts

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Re: Railclone Pro brise soleil Help
« Reply #1 on: March 04, 2015, 04:33:36 PM »
Hi Phillip,

Thanks for contacting us. I hope you are finding RailClone useful. You may find the generator's Y Offset property useful for adjusting a style in relation to its base spline. To edit it try the following:

  • Open the Style Editor by clicking on in the Style Rollout
  • Select the generator and go to the Properties, these are on the right of the style editor
  • Enter a value for the Y Offset parameter, if there are multiple generators, use the same value for all generators.


I hope that helps, if you're able to provide more details about the issues you are encountering or a sample file that would help me to diagnose the problem, I'd be happy to help further.

Many thanks,

Paul
« Last Edit: March 04, 2015, 04:44:38 PM by Paul Roberts »
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

Sketchrender

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Re: Railclone Pro brise soleil Help
« Reply #2 on: March 04, 2015, 05:44:35 PM »
Thank you

I am right in thinking and I have played with it, but that just offsets the BS off the wall.
The default BS is 600mm say , I want for example a 2.4m deep BS, with about 16 fins angled?
Is this possible?

Thank you

Phil

Paul Roberts

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Re: Railclone Pro brise soleil Help
« Reply #3 on: March 04, 2015, 07:06:11 PM »
Hi Phil,

Thanks for clarifying. Are you using the Brise from our libraries? If so I'm afraid they are all a fixed size, created using an L1S generator.

You have two options if you want to create a larger version. Either extract and remodel the geometry so that it's 2.4m wide, or create a more complex style that's fully adjustable. The first option is the simplist if you're new to RailClone. To do this:

  • Load the library style and open the style editor by clicking
  • In the style editor you'll see a number of segments:

    Select each of these in turn and click to extract the geometry from the RailClone object back into the scene
  • You can now edit this geometry and the changes will be reflected automatically in RailClone. For example we could elongate the brackets and clone additional fins.

  • Finally you may need to adjust the Y Offset value mentioned in my previous post to compensate for the larger geometry.

A fully adjustable style takes a little more work and familiarity with RailClone. If you wanted to take a look at how this might be done, I've converted the same style as an example. To start with, instead of enlarging the geometry, break it into smaller pieces like this:



These pieces can then be reconstructed using RailClone using A2S arrays. In the attached example I've used two arrays - one for the fins and one for the brackets. It is often a lot easier to break down a style into multiple arrays rather than try and fit it into just one.



In addition to the standard inputs, this style uses a couple of useful tricks:

  • Null or Empty segments This is a segment with padding but no geometry attached, these are useful for creating gaps in the array. In this style they are used in the fins generator to create spaces for the supports to fit into and avoid interpenetrating geometry.
  • Multiply by -1 To move the generator to the correct side of the spline I'm multiplying the Y Size value by -1, and wiring the output to the generator's Y Offset
  • Using XSplinePosition This is the most complex part of this style. In order to add the pieces at the top and bottom of an X Evenly column it is necessary to detect how close it is the vertical start and end of the array. To do this you can create an Arithmetic node set to Equation and enter an If statement that uses the XSplinePosition variable to test its location. For example:

    if(XSplinePosition >0.5, 1, 2)  will return 1 if the segment is over half way along the Y Axis, or 2 if it is under half way along the spline axis. You can test for multiple conditions by nesting these statements:

    if(YSplinePosition<0.05,1,
    if(YSplinePosition>0.99,3,2)
    )


    This is the example used in the style, it returns 1 if the segment falls within the first 5% of the length, 3 if it is over 99%, and 2 if it's anywhere between. This is then wired to a selector node so that it can use these values to control the segment to be used. This is a rare case of needing an expression, in most cases you won't need to, and we have plans to solve this particular situation in a much simpler way for a future release.

I hope this helps, I've included both examples in the attached file. Please let me know if you have further questions.

Kind regards,

Paul
« Last Edit: March 04, 2015, 07:10:27 PM by Paul Roberts »
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

Sketchrender

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Re: Railclone Pro brise soleil Help
« Reply #4 on: March 05, 2015, 09:25:26 AM »
Paul

Thank you very much, the file you attached is the beta version I think.
I am on the 2.3.4, could you re save it as my version as it tells me to get the latest version.

I only purchased it the other day so it should be the latest build, but not the beta.
There is no way of adding to the seed Library file is there?

Copy an existing element and changing the size ect?
Thank you

phil


Paul Roberts

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Re: Railclone Pro brise soleil Help
« Reply #5 on: March 05, 2015, 12:03:49 PM »
Hi Phil,

My apologies, please find attached a file that should open in your version.

We do not recommend editing the library files directly as your changes will be overwritten when installing an upgrade. However it is possible to copy the files to a new locations to create a duplicate, and edit them. Once you've copied the files, add the new location to the library browser by following these steps:
  • With the library editor open go to File>Preferences… or click the preferences button from the top toolbar.
  • The Library Paths rollout shows a list of all the locations currently being used. To add a new location click on the Add… button and navigate to the folder for your libraries.
  • In the Label field enter a location name to display in the tree navigator.
  • Click Use Path to add the location to the library and return to the preferences.
  • Click OK and you should now see all the sub folders and libraries displayed in the tree navigator on the left hand side of library browser.

You can read more about customising the library in the documentation here.

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

Cheers,

Paul
Paul Roberts
iToo Software