Topics created by Sauronbloo

Sorry I did not make my self very clear;
1)The dimension is 852 ft not 852 inches. It was just some extraneous geometry in the model that far off axis that would affect when you do a zoom extents;
2) The two windows in my last model are not the same. I will very seldom do a complete model for folks because I want them to learn by doing. The only reason for those two was to show how easy it is to make windows to you initial requirements;
3) Mirroring will not work because as the name implies the windows must have a plane of symmetry to mirror and the layout does not;
4) Using the architectural units is not very good model practice IMHO when working this type of problem. It does not give you enough display resolution to see when small errors are present. That is the reason I recommended decimal, with at least 3 places;
5) The picture of the spider is not what I had in mind. At the very top where all "parts" come together I think there some type of metical part to tie all parts together. Some what like you see on a geodesic dome, spider maybe not the correct word?
6) The approach I outlined to you makes drawing the windows very easy. You should try it.
All you have to do is two offsets of 1/2" each and then push pull [b]up 1" and 1 1/2" to make 1/2 frame and then repeat for other side, then add glass and you are done! [/b]The only down side is they will all be unique and number of detail drawings will have to made for a builder. Of course the drawing is just the first step. Static and dynamic analysis needs to be done. Where I worked we usually require a margin of safety of 2.5 at start and then reduce that down to 1.25 to 1.5 usually for final engineering release.
7)The rect. grid is as shown below by pabcot except I was thinking horizontal vs vertical and think that would allow you to work in the triangle at top.
8)[b] My discussion about replacing components was related as follows:
If I make a component of say the bottom left triangle< note I did not say frame> and the repeat that for the bottom right triangle> I can then very easily replace the right one with the left at the correct orientation and scale by setting the correct axis reference on the component and the model. There will be no manual rotation required, Su does that automatically as well as the scaling. The model issue did not let me do that.:shock:
9) Diff results=> I was trying to relate the sequence of axis translation and rotation can give different results depending on the sequence done and you should not let rendering be a driver in your design decisions, model using monochrome, do not use large photo image textures and keep ploy count down if possible (ie no circles with 100 vertices etc). SU moel can many times be made several different ways so when you have problems look for different approach or ask for early help so you don't get beyond point of no return , but that happens to some of us 😞
[/b]Note that some of comments are based on my lack of knowledge. I don't know if you are doing a real design or just a concept drawing.

There a lot of choices out there, as you know. All renderers have their lighting and material systems which are generally not compatible with those of the other renderers. This makes it difficult to learn and evaluate very many of them. If you are looking for suggestions - Don't waste too much time setting up materials in SU. I use Twilight and am happy with it's biased/un-biased approach.

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@tig said:

However, the bottom [and top] facets of your curved beams must have dividing edges between them to maintain the associated faces which have slightly different 'normals'.

you can use the slider to only affect edges between faces up to a certain limit so if it's ~60º solid edges are kept between clearly different angled faces, but those between edges with slight variation in their faces' 'normal-angles' are smoothed...
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Ok, I'll have to pay closer attention when moving the smooth slider, I've just been putting it all the way up and checking every thing. I see that I have very limited understanding of how most of what I do is accomplished, I'm surprised I've even gotten this far!

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@pbacot said:

TT cleanup to remove coplanar (unnecessary) edges. Then smooth all with soften-smooth window--adjusting the setting to keep sharp edges sharp. I don't see a problem with texturing etc. What is the purpose of welding at this point?
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I have an issue that's been driving me crazy when rendering, that the faces don't reflect the light how I want bc the faces have hard lines separating them. I want the roof to reflect like a curve, not a faceted diamond. I thought welding would stabalize the structure, allowing me to erase the offending lines. I tried welding the whole roof face, but that caused more problems, as whole squares welded together, not allowing me to select one edge, but a whole window opening on one click- not wjhat I want in this case, but an awesome plugin! Cleanup fixed tons of probs, and cleaned out tons of unused materials, but I think it also purged some mats that were in use on a small scale- this was well worth it to me, as there were so many trash materials that twilight wouldn't even attempt to list them!

I've gotten great info from you guys, but I think I've gotten far enough off the original topic for now, I guess it makes more sense to start a new thread relevant to my next question or issue. Thanks for all the helpful replies!

Well, for anyone coming across this thread, I'm abandoning this issue. I've searched the vray forums, and followed those to other sites as far as I can, and It seems there is no easy way to reproduce these effects without knowledge of texturing. The files seem to be included so that ppl with skill can load the seperate images into 3dsmax and make their own version from the source files. I've hurt my brain just trying to get that far, I'm not even gonna bother trying to mess with the files. I've gone over to twilight, which seems much easier to get the simple but good results I'm looking for. I'm not trying to take a college course to get this better, and it seems that's the only thing that'll get me the real results I want. Thanks for both of your responses