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Author Topic: Arena Seats Question  (Read 4455 times)

VelvetElvis

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Arena Seats Question
« on: October 25, 2017, 10:23:24 PM »
Expanding on this thread, https://forum.itoosoft.com/railclone-pro-(*)/(wip)-stadium-arena-seat-positionning-'wrapping'-question/

I have a few questions on how to do seats that run along an angled portion of an arena. When using spline mat id's to control where the steps go, it works perfectly except when we run into a condition where the steps need to follow an angle of the arena. I have included some examples of previous bowls that were built the old way, with sweeps and manual placing. I have also included a Max 2016 file of our current bowl rail clone.

I work with sports architects, so we need to generally follow the layout of the bowl so we can't always just stick the rows of stairs in the center of the lines.

Paul Roberts

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Re: Arena Seats Question
« Reply #1 on: October 27, 2017, 06:10:22 PM »
    Hi,

    Thanks for the interesting question.

    Please take a look at the attached file for a possible solution. I've made the following changes.

    - Removed Limit by ID from all generators.
    - Deleted the base from the step segments and allowed the existing base to travel through to the corners where they are bevelled.
    - Added the step segments to the Inner Corner Input. Set its Pivot to Align Left (If you need to alternate this you could use material IDs but with a Conditional operator).
    This will add a step to the right hand side of any Vertex. If you want more control you can add another conditional operator to add steps only for vertices of a specified type, eg. Corner or Bezier-Corner
    - Used a separate generator for the handrails.
    - Added a Null segment to the Inner Corner input of the chair Generators and added right padding to remove chairs from the steps
    - Added an expression to rotate the handrails to bisect the angle of the corner.
    - Positioned the steps and handrails using top and bottom padding.




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


Many Thanks,


Paul
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« Last Edit: October 28, 2017, 09:05:17 AM by iToo »
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

VelvetElvis

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Re: Arena Seats Question
« Reply #2 on: October 30, 2017, 03:28:08 PM »
Many thanks! It is my goal to make this rail clone bowl as robust as possible. I have a list of features to add into this bowl rail clone object and I can't think you enough for your help. I'm not much of a code guy, so being able to use and understand the real power of rail clone generators with simple code has always been tough, but you make it easy and clear. I've had a lot of, "It was really just 2 lines of code I was stuck on or afraid of?"

Let me tinker around with this and I'm sure I'll have some follow up questions.

VelvetElvis

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Re: Arena Seats Question
« Reply #3 on: November 01, 2017, 06:03:49 PM »
Once again, thank you for your support. I've added in the functionality to our bowl system and we now have a pretty complete rail clone-able bowl.

I have a few additional questions. When the steps are at the inner corners, the left edge of the step is getting sliced off so we can see into the step. I can fix this if I slide the step to the left or right, but I'm wondering what is causing that? The step geometry is set to not slice. This is a very minor issue and more than likely won't be see in a render, but if it is possible to fix I'd like it. It only does this on the inner corner, steps on the straight parts of the arena are just fine.

When using the clip spline to cut in the area for the voms, is there a way to have the walls move with the clipping spline in rail clone (in the y-axis of the row)? You can't really export many parameters from the clip spline object.  Right now I've just exposed the parameters of the voms walls and steps so the user can just use a spinner to move it into position.

Of course, I can always go further in the development and I've got a few more features to add. I've been using this write up from Dynamo for Revit as a big source of reference. https://parametricmonkey.com/2017/10/23/seating-bowl/ That is obviously more mathematically correct that I need our rail clone to be.

Paul Roberts

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Re: Arena Seats Question
« Reply #4 on: November 09, 2017, 01:31:35 PM »
Hi,

Before I answer your questions I just wanted to say that style is looking fantastic!

When the steps are at the inner corners, the left edge of the step is getting sliced off so we can see into the step. I can fix this if I slide the step to the left or right, but I'm wondering what is causing that?

That behaviour is caused by the Bevel Corning setting in the generator's parameters. It overrides the segments slice settings so that you have the option to retain bevelled corners while all other slice operations are disable. You can disable it, but you may need to make a few changes to align the segments with the corners correctly.





For example, with bevel disabled, the segment will be aligned to the spline before the corner. To get around this, add a compose operator and wire a null segment to the first two inputs, followed by the steps. This puts a null segment before the corner, another right on the corner, and your steps after the corner.





When using the clip spline to cut in the area for the voms, is there a way to have the walls move with the clipping spline in rail clone (in the y-axis of the row)

I'm afraid I can't think of a way to track the position on the Y axis of the clipping splines. Probably your technique for adjust the position using a spinner is the easiest at this point. The other option would be to use the clipping spline as the boundary for a generator that builds the VOM, and simultaneously cuts the hole. But it might take a bit of manual positioning.


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


Many Thanks,


Paul


Paul Roberts
iToo Software