Tracery help

david_h

Im not really a newbie, but I figured this was the best place to ask this question. what would be the best way to model this in SU? I am thinking of Just drawing it in 2D with arcs and stuff and then Tubealongpath.rb but it also Curves slightly.

Help would be appreciated.

Merci.

David

remus

Unless its very important for it to be tubey, id just do it as square section by drawing the outline then push/pulling it up.

If you want to go tubey i reckon drawing all the curves in and then using tube along path to draw them all in before cleaning it up.

tomsdesk

Yet another way to go (this is a bit fudgey)...gotta love this program: Create an elevation of the pattern (I would trace half the photo with polylines in autocad then import the dwg into SU), then use the pushpull tool to give the grille it's depth...this will not be curved, of course.

For a curved grille, this is the fudgey part: (assuming this element isn't all of the model, or even a major part of it, but important enough you want to see a curved shadow from it on the wall...I would) before using the pushpull create two surfaces that match the curve and location of the front and back of the grille. Locate the center of your half trace perpendicular to those curved surfaces, then pushpull the pattern thru them, intersect with model, and erase excess. Once you copy and flip a second half into place you have an almost (whose gonna see those corners not 90? :`) you can charge full price for.

Hint:
Use the entity info toolbar to adjust the number of segments of the different sized curves as needed for desired smoothness.

Working on pic of the second part above...will post.

david_h

WOW! thanks for all the tips. TUBEY really isn't the issue, but the gist of it is trying to draw the lines correctly--i.e. arcs and stuff--off-setting them to give them some width. Cut out the negative space and then PUshPull to give it overall thickenss. Then I thought maybe using FDD to curve it. But I haven't had a chance to try it out yet.

Thanks again for all the insight.

D

tomsdesk

here's that demo skippy:

curvedgrille.skp

Gidon Yuval

Nice one, Tom!