Curviloft Alternative
Ling Baus
You may notice that there are certain elements that can be seen in the final model, but nothing is fully resolved. I was focusing on where and how the building cast shadows, how to form the land around the building, and how the form would reinforce my concept and performance, among other things.
Once I had a good base going, I began modeling the curves and softening the transitions. I have tested out many plugins and the problem I come across with most of them is how unstable they are. If they were not used just right or used inside of a group, they would crash my model. The series of plugins that I have found to work best are the FREDO Tools and more specifically the Curviloft plugin. You need to install 2 ruby scripts, the LibFredo6 found here, and the Curviloft found here. You will also need to log into Sketchucation (Free) to download the plugins.
Once I had a series of lines ready to loft, I started the Curviloft plugin. The process is really straight forward. (4) I choose the first spline curve, (5) then I choose the second spline curve, (6) and then hit the check mark twice to complete the process. The plugin creates a smooth surface between the two spline curves, allowing you to choose how many times to subdivide the surface among other options. The best part is that the plugin is really stable and can be used inside of groups.
Finally, time was spent cleaning up the edges removing any unnecessary line work. This meant hiding a lot of the line work. Below, I am showing two screen shots. One with the hidden geometry on, and the other with it off. This tells a better story of what is going on with the geometry and how well a model can be cleaned up for presentation purposes.
1. My linework that I export out of sketchup is always jagged and not clean like yours looks.
I have tried jpg, png, (and pdf which usually crashes) without good results. What is recommended
to get clean linework.
Just upgraded to SketchUp 2013
No Curvioft available for it apparently. Specifically, there is no longer a plugin folder availbale to instal LibFredo library and tools.
ANy suggestions on how to get curviloft again for the upgrade?
@Jay
If you feel that strong about SketchUP vs. Rhino you should just start a blog that is devoted to Rhino. This blog has been great for me and any others who all have jobs at architecture firms and students alike.
I think sketch up has its uses, while i personally haven't used Rhino it seems it has its own place as well.
They way i see it and correct me if im wrong. It seems like Sketch up is the preferred software for students to use in school. While The use of software such as Rhino or Revit is more of the professional side.
The way ive done it is. Ill use sketch up for very free form shapes such as what Alex did. I attempted doing something very similar to this in Revit, and it was a hassle, and didnt come close to looking like what was created in Sketch up. I will use Revit though since i feel its more of a industry standard just how Rhino is. Maybe im wrong and there is such a need for Sketch up.
I think overall we should respect each others use of software and appreciate for the exchange of informaton.
The work Alex has been showing is really interesting and great learning. I personally don't mind him using Sketch up.
@Jay
Dp Architects are based in Singapore which may be why you have not heard of us. It is not uncommon for narrow minded people to be xenophobic. Both Sketchup and Rhino (and Revit and 3DS) are used within the company, each for different purposes and stages of the process. I was making the point that sketchup is used in many firms, although you are correct in saying it is unlikely to be the sole piece of software used due to its limitations. It is useful to be proficient with many different software products to ensure you don't limit you're own options and design capabilities.
@Jonathan Llamas
I completely agree. Also on the point of it being used by students, this is one of the reasons why Alex's blog is so impressive. He focuses as much as possible on free software and doesn't charge for the tutorials, making it universally accesible. As an architect this is very important to me.
I would echo people's take on your opinion. Interestingly enough though, I was having a similar discussion with some colleagues recently and several of these points came up. However, what strikes me as odd is that you are not critiquing Alex's work, aesthetic, or composition? You're actually critiquing Sketchup which is just a tool. If the tutorial instead showed how to use pencils or watercolor, would you still hold the same reservations because of how 'mediocre' that methodology is in the digital age? You can loft surfaces using Revit, Sketchup+Plugins, AutoCAD3D, Rhino, Rhino+Grasshopper, etc. There is no golden rule, and if you prefer a different method, fantastic.
Grow up man, every person has the right to chose their own software and perfect their skills with it, anyways, "program skills" aren't what defines us as architects, its our ideas that define the work we do, software doesn't have to become that tool that makes or breaks our designs.
FYI, check Peter Guthrie's page if you want more proof of what can be achieved with sketchup.
Ali Goshtasbi Rad: The idea here is to create a form whose base is a square and follows the lines of the surrounding streets and rises to a circular shape which is an ideal form for wind force resistance.
Facade elements are organically designed to reduce the feeling of square to circle deformation. The orientation of the elements can vary to create alternative patterns. Here we only have two alternatives, but we can play with the directions and scale of the elements to create many other alternatives.
The whole modeling process was done in 7 minutes inside of SketchUp together with the following plugins: "Slicer, SubD, Split tools, Curviloft, Quadface tools, s4u slice, s4u components and Vertex Tools", and the rendering was made by using V-ray for SketchUp.
Then to get the left hand image to the same scale, I measured the height of the case in the right hand image. That worked out to 2275 inches. I exploded the left hand image and immediately made it a component. I opened the component for editing and drew a line between the top and bottom of the case. Then I measured it with the Tape and entered 2275, Enter. this time, instead of scaling the entire model, SketchUp scales only the active component.
With those images scaled, I began drawing my lines. For the sweeps of the rails I drew the straight lines at the left end and used the Bezier tool from the BZ Spline plugin to draw the curves. Before drawing the curves for each sweep I drew a short line segment parallel to the red axis from the centerline toward the left. I do this to ensure that when the half is copied and flipped, the faces adjacent to each other are coplanar. This helps to hide the seam line. I made these lines 2 inches long but as it turned out, I should have made them a bit longer. Probably something closer to 10 inches long would have worked better. I used Weld to weld the curves and straight lines together in anticipation of needing to select them as single entities.
Now it is time to create the surfaces between the curves. This could be done manually by drawing lines between vertices but it would take a long time. I used Extrude Edges by Rails which makes quick work of this part.
A piece with compound curves--whether it's this bombe chest or something that Michael Fortune might have designed--is probably the biggest challenge in SketchUp. Challenging, but not impossible, as Dave's explanation shows.
When I tried to draw the chest, I created the overall outline in a slightly different way. The curves at the top and bottom of the front are identical. And the bulge in the front is identical to the bulge on the side. So I drew the side component, copied and rotated it, gave each copy some thickness, then intersected them as Dave explained. Then I positioned them and placed the top and bottom curve between them. After I was satisfied that all four pieces were actually joined, I used the Extrude by Rails plug-in, as Dave did, to create the face.
To David5346, thanks to you and other readers, who bring challenging questions and models. I learned quite a bit from this example. Yes there are multiple ways to tackle the project. And this one requires going beyond Push/Pull, Intersect, and Follow Me.
Hi Dave- I'm the first to admit that I'm not very plug-in savvy, but I wonder if, instead of the "extrude by rails" plugin, you could have accomplished the same by using the "skinning by shapes" plugin that you used in the Windsor chair seat demo? I'm trying to keep my learning curve to a manageble radius.
Thanks,
Michael
Thanks for valuable info? Mike. There is very little data on
making bombe drawings.
However, it is unclear to me how did You make those two strips on the sides of the front? -They are missing on the stages of extrusion but they are shown on the brown completed front
P.S. David, I am very sorry to have called You Mike by mistake.
Unfortunately I do not know how to edit comments here
Still hope You answer my question about those flat side borders on the front. )))
In reply to "user-6893762", the strips on the sides are created during the skinning process with Extrude Edges by Rails. You can see where they are in the plan view of the lines and then in the next screen shot the leftmost triangles are the start of that surface.
They don't show very well in the second to last screen shot because the extension softened the edges. to make them show, I turned on Hidden Geometry (View menu) and then selected those edges. Then I unsoftened them. There are a couple of ways to do that. One would be to set the Soften/Smooth slider all the way to the left. The other would be to untick the boxes for Soft and Smooth in Entity Info.
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